About the project
The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), launched by IFPRI, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), and USAID's Feed the Future in February 2012, is the first comprehensive and standardized measure to directly measure women’s empowerment and inclusion in the agricultural sector. The WEAI is widely applied across several countries and have gone through several refinements and adjustments to fit various contexts. IFPRI researchers have been at the center of leading this journey of scaling up and applying WEAI across several countries and contexts.
Meanwhile, IFPRI is working with the World Bank to develop a manual for the women’s empowerment in agriculture index (WEAI) adjusted to Iraqi context, and to assess a gender-differentiated impact of COVID-19 as well as progress towards gender parity in the agricultural sector by piloting the WEAI.
About WEAI
The WEAI can measure women’s empowerment and inclusion in the agricultural sector and inform policy making process. The WEAI is an innovative tool comprised of two sub-indices. The first assesses the degree to which respondents are empowered in five domains of empowerment (5DE) in agriculture. It reflects the percentage of women and men who are empowered and, among those who are not, the percentage of domains in which they enjoy adequate achievements. In order to efficiently use the index it should be customized to Iraqi context. The second sub-index, the Gender Parity Index (GPI), measures gender parity. The GPI reflects the percentage of women who are empowered or whose achievements are at least as high as the men in their households. For those households that have not achieved gender parity, the GPI shows the empowerment gap that needs to be closed for women to reach the same level of empowerment as men in their households.
Visit WEAI project page for more details: https://www.ifpri.org/project/weai
Project Funders
The World Bank
