Meghan Bolden of MarketShare Associates (MSA) leads a Q&A with leaders in the agricultural sector. This Q&A explores how two organizations, CARE and Cultural Practice, approach studying, understanding, and increasing women’s decision-making power in agriculture.

1. What aspects of women’s  roles in  decision-making in agricultural contexts have your teams explored (household composition, types of decisions, etc.)? Please explain why you explored these aspects.

Deborah Rubin, Co-Director, Cultural Practice, LLC: As a qualitative researcher, I have long been interested in issues around women’s and men’s decision-making in agriculture. In my dissertation research, I was studying how men and women differed in their participation in cooperative farming in Tanzania, and the extent to which they could choose to participate or were being required to do so, either because other household members would not or from pressure applied by local authorities. I wanted to understand the different motivations and incentives among household members in making decisions about trade-offs between farming on their private plots or working on the village (cooperative) fields.

For the last ten years or so, I have been involved in research on women’s empowerment as part of a several different projects implemented by a great team at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) that have led to the development of the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index or pro-WEAI, and its more recent iteration, the pro-WEAI for Market Inclusion. Women’s decision-making over agricultural production and agribusiness is a central focus in this work. It addresses women’s capacity to make decisions over many what to cultivate or process, management of assets, starting or managing an agribusiness, control over time both at home and at work, and similar areas. We are just starting a new project that will expand the focus to women’s decision-making in farmer producer and marketing groups.

Opper Maravanyika, Gender Advisor, CARE: Specific to the agricultural context, we focus on women’s active participation in decisions on agricultural production and use of household incomes at the household level.

Decisions on agricultural production refers to decisions in areas such as such as land use for cultivation, the amount of land to use for a particular crop (cash crop v. crop for consumption), and what to produce or cultivate. Considerations include livestock-raising, who undertakes the agricultural tasks, procurement and use of tools and equipment, seeds to be used, what inputs to buy for agricultural production, when to harvest, how to use the harvest (amount of produce to sell v. keep for consumption), when or who would take produce to the market, who and where to sell the produce and at what price.

Use of household incomes refers to how a woman spends her own income and the income her spouse brings into the household; how to spend household’s savings; how to make smaller purchases, such as food and other less expensive needs; how to make more expensive purchases, such as new animals or household equipment; and the type of income-generating activities she will be investing in and engaging with. 

1. What tools or resources can be useful to understand women’s roles in decision-making beyond the household dynamics, such as their roles in community organizations, institutions and/or firms?

Deborah: In just the last few years, although the number of tools assessing women’s decision-making in the larger community has increased, I don’t think there is a single agreed-upon approach. As mentioned in question 1, this is exactly the subject we are looking at in a new project. Previously, I contributed to a tool to look at women’s roles in governance of irrigation systems, a topic that Barbara van Koppen, Ruth Meinzen-Dick and Margaret Zwarteveen have explored in much greater depth.

1. Can you share any metrics or measurement tools that have helped your organization to evaluate changes in women’s  roles in decision-making? Have you used any measurement tools besides surveys? Please include any feedback on the pros and cons of tools you have used. 

Deborah: The larger team that I am working with at IFPRI has developed the pro-WEAI tool which can be used at baseline, midline and the endline of a project to get a better understanding of changes in women’s decision-making and empowerment over the course of the project. I helped to develop the qualitative protocols that explore the subject using mostly key informant interviews and focus group discussions.

Opper: Here are tools that we use for assessing women’s participation in decision-making:

• Pathways baseline tool
• Focus group discussion guide for qualitative data collection
• Pro-WEAI (for assessing women’s role in household decision-making around production and income)

1. Can you share an example of a visual graphic or chart that you’ve referenced or presented to measure or evaluate aspects of women’s roles in decision-making? 

Deborah: I have used a graphic that builds on the work of others at IFPRI who have formulated the “Reach/Benefit/Empower” Framework. 

My former colleague Caitlin Nordehn, now at TechnoServe, created this version of the graphic. It is very helpful when shared with implementers to explain, for example, that getting more women to participate in a training or a project is not itself sufficient in achieving greater empowerment. This version is in a report that I wrote recently.

Opper: We use these graphics:

1. Is there anything else our readers should keep in mind to advance their understanding and evaluation of women’s decision-making roles in agriculture? 

Deborah: The importance of using mixed methods to research this topic!

I’m happy to share a “hot off the press” IFPRI discussion paper that I co-authored with Cheryl Doss at Oxford University, “Exploring women’s empowerment using a mixed methods approach.” It is not an empirical piece but rather an exploration of how both qualitative and quantitative approaches can together provide a more holistic view of women’s decision-making and the process of empowerment in agricultural communities.

I think we also need more research on women’s decisions to leave agriculture. This is an emerging question, especially among young men and women: when it is better to leave the farm and what do we need to do to make agriculture more attractive?

Opper: The indicators and tools help to capture the extent to which women are involved in agricultural decision-making. However, these might not capture the equality of women and men’s decision-making power. For example, [indicators and tools] might not be able to showcase whether women and men have equal decision-making power at the household and community levels.