Designing For Empowerment Impact In Agricultural Development Projects Experimental Evidence From The Agriculture Nutrition And Gender Linkages Angel Project In Banglades

Author : Quisumbing, Agnes R.
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 47 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book Designing for empowerment impact in agricultural development projects: Experimental evidence from the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) project in Banglades written by Quisumbing, Agnes R. and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2020-08-12 with total page 47 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The importance of women’s roles for nutrition-sensitive agricultural projects is increasingly recognized, yet little is known about whether such projects improve women’s empowerment and gender equality. We study the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) pilot project, which was implemented as a cluster-randomized controlled trial by the Government of Bangladesh. The project’s treatment arms included agricultural training, nutrition behavior change communication (BCC), and gender sensitization trainings to husbands and wives together – with these components combined additively, such that the impact of gender sensitization could be distinguished from that of agriculture and nutrition trainings. Empowerment was measured using the internationally-validated project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI), and attitudes regarding gender roles were elicited from both men and women, to explore potentially gender-transformative impacts. Our study finds that ANGeL increased both women’s and men’s empowerment, raised the prevalence of households achieving gender parity, and led to small improvements in the gender attitudes of both women and men. We find significant increases in women’s empowerment scores and empowerment status from all treatment arms but with no significant differences across these. We find no evidence of unintended impacts on workloads and we note inconclusive evidence of possible increases in intimate partner violence (IPV). Our results also suggest some potential benefits of bundling nutrition and gender components with an agricultural development intervention; however, many of these benefits seem to be driven by bundling nutrition with agriculture. While we cannot assess the extent to which including men and women within the same treatment arms contributed to our results, it is plausible that the positive impacts of all treatment arms on women’s empowerment outcomes may have arisen from implementation modalities that provided information to both husbands and wives when they were together. The role of engaging men and women jointly in interventions is a promising area for future research.

Author : Quisumbing, Agnes R.
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 84 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book Can agricultural development projects empower women? A synthesis of mixed methods evaluations using pro-WEAI in the gender, agriculture, and assets project (phase 2) portfolio written by Quisumbing, Agnes R. and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2022-10-14 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Agricultural development projects increasingly include women’s empowerment and gender equality among their objectives, but efforts to evaluate their impact have been stymied by the lack of comparable measures. Moreover, the context-specificity of empowerment implies that a quantitative measure alone will be inadequate to capture the nuances of the empowerment process. The Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, Phase 2 (GAAP2), a portfolio of 13 agricultural development projects in nine countries in South Asia and Africa, developed the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) and qualitative protocols for impact evaluations. Pro-WEAI covers three major types of agencies: instrumental, intrinsic, and collective. This paper synthesizes the results of 11 mixed-methods evaluations to assess these projects’ empowerment impacts. The projects implemented the pro-WEAI and its associated qualitative protocols in their impact evaluations. Our synthesis finds mixed, and mostly null impacts on aggregate indicators of women’s empowerment, with positive impacts more likely in the South Asian, rather than African, cases. There were more significant impacts on instrumental agency indicators and collective agency indicators, reflecting the group-based approaches used. We found few significant impacts on intrinsic agency indicators, except for those projects that intentionally addressed gender norms. Quantitative analysis does not show an association between the types of strategies that projects implemented and their impacts, except for capacity building strategies. This finding reveals the limitations of quantitative analysis, given the small number of projects involved. The qualitative studies provide more nuance and insight: some base level of empowerment and forms of agency may be necessary for women to participate in project activities, to benefit or further increase their empowerment. Our results highlight the need for projects to focus specifically on empowerment, rather than assume that projects aiming to reach and benefit women automatically empower them. Our study also shows the value of both a common metric to compare empowerment impacts across projects and contexts and qualitative work to understand and contextualize these impacts.

Author : Ahmed, Akhter
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 91 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) evaluation results written by Ahmed, Akhter and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2023-01-26 with total page 91 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationships between agricultural diversity, dietary diversity, and gender norms are complex and multi-dimensional. To better understand these links, and how to most effectively promote nutrition- and gender-sensitive agriculture in Bangladesh, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) designed the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) pilot project, implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture, Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh. ANGeL aimed to identify actions and investments in agriculture that will help increase farm household income, improve nutrition, and empower women. Using rigorous research, namely, a randomized controlled trial design, IFPRI assessed impacts of the ANGeL project interventions on various outcomes. Over the 17-month implementation period, with no inputs provided to participating farm households besides knowledge from trainings, ANGeL generated useful lessons on strengthening the agriculture-nutrition-gender nexus in the country. Both men and women benefited from agricultural trainings, yet women learned more from the same trainings. Crop diversity increased substantially in homestead gardens, mainly due to ANGeL’s emphasis on homestead food production from nutritious crops. Farmers also adopted improved production practices. We consistently found that women were more likely to apply knowledge gained from agricultural production trainings to adopt various types of improved agriculture production practices, such as pest disease and control, seed production and care, and use of quality fertilizer. Similarly, improvements in nutrition knowledge were far greater for women and when trainings were combined. These improvements in knowledge had impacts on nutrition outcomes, with increases in household diet quality and child dietary diversity over the project period. The strongest improvements in empowerment came when agriculture, nutrition, and gender sensitization trainings were combined. ANGeL’s household approach empowered women and men in unique ways: while women became more empowered in asset ownership and income decisions, men became more empowered in production and income decisions in select interventions. Attitudes related to gender of both women and men also improved, with more women recognizing that they make important contributions to their communities. ANGeL is the first ministry-led initiative that uses a rigorous impact evaluation to develop an evidence base to design and implement a national program. The ANGeL project is a significant step towards filling critical knowledge and action gaps in the country on promoting nutrition-and gender-sensitive agriculture.

Author : Tauseef, Salauddin
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 72 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) Baseline Study written by Tauseef, Salauddin and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2017-06-09 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1.1 Background Bangladesh has made commendable progress in domestic food production through public investments in agricultural research and extension, public and private investments in irrigation, and liberalization of agricultural input markets. In the early 1970s, Bangladesh was a food-deficit country with a population of about 75 million people. Today, the population has more than doubled, and the country is nearly self-sufficient in rice production, which has tripled over the past three decades. However, Bangladesh’s performance in improving child and maternal nutrition has been less satisfactory. Despite its success in reducing child stunting, the rate of stunting in Bangladesh (36 percent in 2014) remains high (NIPORT 2015). Bangladesh also continues to struggle with deficiencies in micronutrients such as iron, zinc, iodine, and vitamin A. Such deficiencies reflect poor diets that are rice-dominated, monotonous, and lacking diversity (Ahmed et al. 2013). Anemia (in part due to iron deficiency) is estimated to affect 26 percent of nonpregnant, non-lactating women, whereas 42 percent suffer from iodine deficiency. About 28 percent women of reproductive age are underweight (NIPORT 2015). In preschool children, the rates of anemia, iodine, and vitamin A deficiencies are 33 percent, 40 percent, and 20 percent, respectively (ICDDR,B 2013). Therefore, government policies and strategies underscore the importance of strengthening the linkage between agriculture and nutrition. Agriculture provides a source of food and nutrients, contributes to income, and affects food prices. Exploring agriculture and nutrition linkages in Bangladesh using data from a multi-round district level panel, a study finds that rice yields are associated with earlier introduction of complementary foods to young children, as well as increases in their weight-for-height (Heady and Hoddinott 2016). Agriculture can also have effects on women’s health, nutrition, empowerment and time allocation, which can have important consequences for their ability to care for family members. Given these links, agriculture has the potential to be a strong driver of nutrition. However, that potential is not being fully realized in Bangladesh because, traditionally, nutrition and agricultural policies have been uncoordinated. Low status of women and gender gaps in health and education contribute to chronic child undernutrition (Smith et al. 2003) and food insecurity (von Grebmer et al. 2009), even when other determinants of food security, such as per capita incomes, improve. According to an IFPRI study, women are key actors within the food system, but are historically disempowered in Bangladesh in terms of leadership in the community, control of resources, and control of income (Sraboni, Quisumbing, and Ahmed 2014a). The lack of women’s empowerment weakens the links between agriculture and nutrition. Despite increases in 2 women’s participation in agriculture in Bangladesh in recent years (Asaduzzaman 2010), women face persistent obstacles, particularly due to social and economic constraints, which limit their further inclusion in agriculture. Women have limited control over agricultural assets, as well as limited mobility to go to markets to sell agricultural produce, often relying on husbands and sons to take produce to market. 1.2 Motivation for the Study IFPRI research in Bangladesh, using data from a nationally representative household survey conducted by IFPRI, reveals that women’s empowerment plays a key role in improving household food security and dietary diversity of children, women, and other household members (Sraboni et al. 2014b; Malapit et al. 2015). The study also shows that agricultural production diversity is associated with dietary diversity (Sraboni et al. 2014b). Further, IFPRI research in Bangladesh shows that nutrition behavior change communication (BCC) training imparted to women and men in rural households leads to significant improvements in child nutrition and complementary feeding practices (Ahmed et al. 2016; Menon et al. 2016). Motivated by research-based evidence, IFPRI researchers developed a concept note to strengthen the agriculture-nutrition-gender nexus in Bangladesh and presented it to the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA), Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh in June 2014. Based on the concept note, an inter-ministerial committee of the Government of Bangladesh approved a pilot research project entitled, “Orienting Agriculture Toward Improved Nutrition and Women’s Empowerment”, also known as “Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages”(ANGeL), for implementation by the MOA, with technical assistance from IFPRI and Helen Keller International (HKI), and an evaluation led by IFPRI. The Minister of Agriculture officially launched the pilot project in October 2015. The project is jointly funded by the Government of Bangladesh and USAID. 1.3 The Baseline Report As part of the evaluation of the ANGeL Project, IFPRI carried out a baseline survey of project participants and a comparison group of households just before the start of project interventions. This report presents the results of the ANGeL baseline survey. It is organized in nine sections. Section 2 describes the salient features of the ANGeL Project. Section 3 presents the progress of the ANGeL Project to date. Section 4 describes the baseline survey. Section 5 gives a profile of the survey households. Section 6 provides the land tenure status of sample households and findings on agricultural production and practices. Section 7 presents patterns of food consumption and nutrition. Section 8 provides findings on women’s empowerment. Section 9 summarizes the main findings and provides conclusions.

Author : Hoddinott, John
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 49 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book Can gender- and nutrition-sensitive agricultural programs improve resilience? Medium-term impacts of an intervention in Bangladesh written by Hoddinott, John and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2024-01-26 with total page 49 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are few studies that rigorously assess how agricultural and nutrition related interventions enhance resilience and even fewer that incorporate a gendered dimension in their analysis. Mindful of this, we address three knowledge gaps: (1) Whether agricultural interventions aimed at diversifying income sources and improving nutrition have sustainable impacts (on asset bases, consumption, gender-specific outcomes and women’s empowerment, and on diets) that persist after the intervention ends; (2) whether such interventions are protective when shocks occur? and (3) whether these interventions promote gender-sensitive resilience. We answer these questions using unique data, a four-year post-endline follow up survey of households from a cluster-randomized controlled trial of a nutrition-and-gender-sensitive agricultural intervention in Bangladesh. We find that treatment arms that included both agriculture and nutrition training had sustainable effects on real per capita consumption, women’s empowerment (as measured by the pro-WEAI), and asset holdings measured four years after the original intervention ended. Treatment arms that included both agriculture and nutrition training (with or without gender sensitization) reduced the likelihood that households undertook more severe forms of coping strategies and reduced the likelihood that household per capita consumption fell, in real terms, by more than five percent between in the four years following the end of the intervention. The treatment arm that only provided training in agriculture had positive impacts at endline but these had largely faded away four years later. Our results suggest that bundling nutrition and agriculture training may contribute to resilience as well as to sustained impacts on consumption, women’s empowerment, and asset holdings in the medium term. These have implications for the design of future gender- and nutrition-sensitive agricultural programs.

Author : Ahmed, Akhter
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 54 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book Increasing production diversity and diet quality through agriculture, gender, and nutrition linkages: A cluster-randomized controlled trial in Bangladesh written by Ahmed, Akhter and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2022-04-06 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A growing body of evidence indicates that agricultural development programs can potentially improve production diversity and diet quality of poor rural households; however, less is known about which aspects of program design are effective in diverse contexts and feasible to implement at scale. We address this issue through an evaluation of the Agriculture, Gender, and Nutrition Linkages (ANGeL) project. ANGeL is a randomized controlled trial testing what combination of trainings focused on agricultural production, nutrition behavior change communication, and gender sensitization were most effective in improving production diversity and diet quality among rural farm households in Bangladesh. We find that trainings focused on agriculture improved production diversity in terms of greater production of fruits and vegetables grown on the homestead, eggs, dairy, and fish; adding trainings on nutrition and gender did not significantly change these impacts. Trainings focused on both agriculture and nutrition showed the largest impacts on diet quality, with evidence indicating that households in this arm also significantly increased consumption out of homestead production for fruits and vegetables, eggs, dairy, and fish. Findings indicate that agricultural training that promotes production of diverse, high-value, nutrient-rich foods can increase production diversity, and this can improve diet quality, but diet quality impacts are larger when agricultural training is combined with nutrition training. Relative to treatments combining agriculture and nutrition training, we find no significant impact of adding the gender sensitization on our measures of production diversity or diet quality.

Author : Johnson, Nancy L.
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 36 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book How do agricultural development projects aim to empower women? Insights from an analysis of project strategies written by Johnson, Nancy L. and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2017-02-23 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Increasing numbers of development agencies and individual projects espouse objectives of women’s empowerment, yet there has been little systematic work on mechanisms by which interventions can enhance women’s empowerment. This gap exists because of the lack of consensus on indicators as well as the lack of attention paid to measuring the effects of different types of interventions on empowerment. This paper identifies the types of strategies employed by 13 agricultural development projects within the International Food Policy Research Institute’s Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project Phase 2 (GAAP2) that have explicit objectives of empowering women. We distinguish between reach, benefit, and empowerment as objectives of agricultural development projects. Simply including women does not necessarily benefit them, and even activities that benefit do not necessarily empower. To identify strategies to empower women, we build on the domains included in the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) and are working with the GAAP2 portfolio of projects to develop an empowerment metric that is applicable in the project setting (a project-level WEAI, or pro-WEAI). We have identified the following potential domains to be included in pro-WEAI: input into production decision making, control over resources, control over income, leadership, time, physical mobility, intrahousehold relationships, individual empowerment, reduction in gender-based violence, and decision making on nutrition. The GAAP2 projects address these domains through a wide variety of activities that can be grouped into four main types: (1) direct and indirect provision of goods and services; (2) forming or strengthening groups, organizations, or platforms and networks that involve women; (3) strengthening knowledge and capacity through agricultural extension, business and finance training, nutrition behavior change communication, and other training; and (4) changing gender norms through one-way awareness raising or two-way community conversations about gender issues and their implications. In general, projects with activities in more activity areas target more domains of empowerment, and most projects target a core set of six empowerment domains. With the exception of intrahousehold relationships, which is always targeted by activities designed to influence gender norms, projects target domains with different types of activities or combinations of activities. This setup suggests that there may be no one-to-one link between a specific activity and empowerment benefits, and that implementation modalities will determine whether and how an activity contributes to women’s empowerment. The effectiveness of these project strategies will be assessed using both quantitative and qualitative methods throughout the GAAP2 research project.

Author : Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Publisher : Food & Agriculture Org.
ISBN 13 : 9251378142
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.44/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The status of women in agrifood systems written by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and published by Food & Agriculture Org.. This book was released on 2023-04-13 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The status of women in agrifood systems report uses extensive new data and analyses to provide a comprehensive picture of women’s participation, benefits, and challenges they face working in agrifood systems globally. The report shows how increasing women’s empowerment and gender equality in agrifood systems enhances women’s well-being and the well-being of their households, creating opportunities for economic growth, greater incomes, productivity and resilience. The report comes more than a decade after the publication of the State of food and agriculture (SOFA) 2010–11: Women in agriculture – Closing the gender gap for development. SOFA 2010–11 documented the tremendous costs of gender inequality not only for women but also for agriculture and the broader economy and society, making the business case for closing existing gender gaps in accessing agricultural assets, inputs and services. Moving beyond agriculture, The status of women in agrifood systems reflects not only on how gender equality and women’s empowerment are central to the transition towards sustainable and resilient agrifood systems but also on how the transformation of agrifood systems can contribute to gender equality and women’s empowerment. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the available evidence on gender equality and women’s empowerment in agrifood systems that has been produced over the last decade. The report also provides policymakers and development actors with an extensive review of what has worked, highlighting the promise of moving from closing specific gender gaps towards the adoption of gender-transformative approaches that explicitly address the formal and informal structural constraints to equality. It concludes with specific recommendations on the way forward. Last update 03/08/2023

Author : Ulimwengu, John M.
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 356 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book African food systems transformation and the post-Malabo agenda written by Ulimwengu, John M. and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2023-12-04 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This year marks 20 years of implementing the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), which was broadened under the 2014 Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods. The 2023 Annual Trends and Outlook Report generates evidence on the implementation of the CAADP/Malabo agenda and thus contributes to the design of the post-Malabo phase of CAADP implementation. The report assesses the current state of Africa's food systems, explores strategic issues related to food systems transformation, and reflects on necessary methodologies and approaches to provide a better understanding of key challenges and necessary actions to accelerate transformation.

Author : Malapit, Hazel J.
Publisher : Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 68 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book Development of the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) written by Malapit, Hazel J. and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2019-01-18 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this paper, the authors describe the adaptation and validation of a project-level WEAI (or pro-WEAI) that agricultural development projects can use to identify key areas of women’s (and men’s) disempowerment, design appropriate strategies to address identified deficiencies, and monitor project outcomes related to women’s empowerment. The 12 pro-WEAI indicators are mapped to three domains: intrinsic agency (power within), instrumental agency (power to), and collective agency (power with). A gender parity index compares the empowerment scores of men and women in the same household. The authors describe the development of pro-WEAI, including: (1) pro-WEAI’s distinctiveness from other versions of the WEAI; (2) the process of piloting pro-WEAI in 13 agricultural development projects during the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, phase 2 (GAAP2); (3) analysis of quantitative data from the GAAP2 projects, including intrahousehold patterns of empowerment; and (4) a summary of the findings from the qualitative work exploring concepts of women’s empowerment in the project sites. The paper concludes with a discussion of lessons learned from pro-WEAI and possibilities for further development of empowerment metrics.