The Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), in partnership with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), will hold a public seminar featuring three studies on women empowerment on August 14, 2024, from 9:00 AM to 11:30 AM at the PIDS Conference Hall and via Zoom.
IFPRI Senior Research Fellow Dr. Agnes Quisumbing will deliver the first presentation titled “Assessing Progress towards Women's Empowerment in Agricultural Development Project Portfolios in Africa and Asia”. It will cover two studies co-authored by Dr. Quisimbing related to women's empowerment in agricultural development projects.
The first study “Enhancing agency and empowerment in agricultural development projects: A synthesis of mixed methods impact evaluations from the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, Phase 2 (GAAP2)”, synthesizes findings from 11 agricultural projects across South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. It focuses on assessing how these projects impact women's empowerment using a tool called the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI). This index combines quantitative measures with qualitative methods to understand how these projects influence women's empowerment.
The second study “Assessing multicountry programs through a ‘Reach, Benefit, Empower, Transform’ lens”, analyzes a multicountry programs’ impact on women’s empowerment in Ethiopia, Niger, Nepal, and Kyrgyzstan using a framework called “Reach, Benefit, Empower, Transform”. It found that the programs improved women’s empowerment and gender parity, especially in collective agencies, due to its group-based approach. However, overall workload impacts were mostly null, with tradeoffs between productive and reproductive work, leading to unintended increases in women’s workloads.
IFPRI Senior Research Coordinator Dr. Hazel Malapit will deliver the second presentation titled “Measuring Women's Empowerment in National Surveys”. Her presentation will feature the third study “Measuring women's empowerment in national surveys: Development of the Women’s Empowerment Metric for National Statistical Systems (WEMNS)”, which she co-authored with Dr. Quisumbing and other researchers. This study introduced the Women’s Empowerment Metric for National Statistical Systems (WEMNS), which evaluates empowerment across four key areas: inner strength, practical capabilities, collective influence, and resources for empowerment. The authors detail the development process of WEMNS, its distinctive features, the pilot testing conducted in Bangladesh, Guatemala, Malawi, and Nepal, and the initial data analysis.
To attend onsite or online, please register at https://bit.ly/pidseventaugust14. Due to limited venue slots, registrations will be manually approved by event organizers, who will notify approved onsite attendees. You may also tune in to the PIDS and SERP-P Facebook pages for the livestream.
