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Beyond income: The Pandora's box of agency and what it really means
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This presentation was given by Minal Cabraal (The Palladium Group), as part of the Annual Scientific Conference hosted by the University of Canberra and co-sponsored by the University of Canberra, the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) and CGIAR Collaborative Platform for Gender Research. The event took place on April 2-4, 2019 in Canberra, Australia. Read more: https://www.canberra.edu.au/research/faculty-research-centres/aisc/seeds-of-change and https://gender.cgiar.org/annual-conference-2019/
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Beyond income: The Pandora's box of agency and what it really means
- Beyond Income The Pandora’s box of agency and what it really means Seeds of Change Conference Canberra, April 2019
- About MDF Who are we What do we do • We work with businesses, associations and governments in Asia Pacific to help farmers and workers thrive. • Women’s Economic Empowerment is central to our work on the ground. • MDF is funded by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and implemented by Palladium in partnership with Swiss Contact.
- MDF’s approach to WEE • Business Case • Integration of implementation and Results Measurement • MDF WEE framework • WEE lens • Feedback loop
- The six domains of WEE The Strategic Guidance Note on Women’s Economic Empowerment: http://marketdevelopmentfa cility.org/?type=publication &posting_id=5118 AgencyAccess Influence on Social Norms Access to Opportunities Economic Advancemen t Access to Assets, Services Functions and Workload Decision Making The SixWEE Domains 1 6 5 4 3 2
- Grappling with agency AGENCY Multi-dimensional Difficult to measure Both internal and external to individual
- Beyond Income: Introducing the Paper Purpose • How does increased household income impact WEE? • How does access impact agency? • How can these agency changes be measured? Methodology • Selection of interventions (5 countries, 14 interventions) • Stocktake of previously available information • Development of research plan & primary research (75 in-depth interviews) • Analysis of data
- When analysing the influence of household income on agency, three broad categories of inquiry emerged that were relevant: Measuring Agency • Whether a woman has the ability and negotiation power to influence decisions • Whether there are external factors limiting or enhancing her agency 01 02 • Whether the change is making a difference to her quality of life. 03
- Conceptual Tool & Framework Capturing movement around women’s agency through 7 dimensions
- How Access Can Trigger Changes in Agency Dimensions Understanding the relationship between access to agency: 5 triggers were analysed across the different interventions to see how the movement of agency looked like Access to information Access to goods and services Access to markets Increased income (all else remaining the same) Access to opportunities
- Sugarcane farming communities in Fiji: • Key income-earning activity. Most households (HH) are involved in secondary economic activity. • Women's contributions are less acknowledged (traditionally support roles) • HH share financial decision making. Partnership: C.J. Singh to introduce mechanical harvesting services Changes: Reduced workload and improved well-being for women Access to goods and services Case Study: MDF Fiji
- MDF Sri Lanka: Case Study Fishing communities in Northern Sri Lanka • Fishing is a key income-earning activity but most households involved in secondary economic activity • Women have nominal roles in fishing • Women have very high influence on decision-making for households Partnership: Divron Bioventures Change in HH income only, without other access triggers targeted at women Changes: Increased influence (income), improved well-being & recognition for women
- Learnings
- Thank you
Editor's Notes
- Bula vinaka, Ayubowan Adimaibole. Minal. MDF We want to share about our approach to Women’s Economic Empowerment (referred to from now on as WEE), MDF experiences and learnings from the field in Womens Economic Empowerment, specifically in trying to understand and measure agency. Also, share Conceptual Framework tool that we developed with case studies from Fiji and Sri Lanka.
- Economic Programme DFAT Palladium Group Swiss Contact 2011 5 countries - Partner with private sector, Government bodies - innovate, invest and undertake reforms - help farmers and workers thrive - Women’s Economic Empowerment central to our work. - Influences all aspects of thinking and interventions.
- 2015 MDF WEE framework guides approach and strategy as well as integration of WEE into operations. WEE is not an after thought. Influences all aspects of thinking and interventions. Looking through a Sort of WEE lens. Learnt, Look deeper than circumstances where women are at the point of transaction. It must be noted, MDF is always conscious of the Business case, right incentives and the right partners to ensure that unlocking market constraints and pathways created for economic empowerment created are sustainable. Robust Quality and inclusion system and team (concept note, partnership, baselines, early impact, monitoring, late impact) that guide and feedback into approach. Differentiates MDF.
- MDF Framework – identified 6 domains, advance womens economic empowerment. Click: 2) 6 Domains> DIVIDED 2 wider areas in WEE: Access - woman’s ability to access opportunities, goods, information, networks, etc. Agency - woman’s power to make and act on economic decisions 3) Both Access and agency are mutually reinforcing and it is vital that programs understand and measure the impact of access and agency as they both as they lead to economic empowerment. I’d like to now handover to my colleague.
- Access seen as traditional entry point Agency – more difficult to integrate Multi-dimensional nature Internal & external factors But still vital to understand & measure – otherwise miss capturing impacts
- Common assumption – empowerment means being at point of transaction What we saw was different Realised we needed to dig deeper Wanted to measure agency sustainably Methodology
- Across country contexts – common themes 1 – decision-making power 2 – external factors 3 – other nuances Share themes so it is useful for other programmes
- Introduce conceptual framework 7 dimensions – guide teams
- Visualising allows rapid assessment Use it to make decisions on next steps Discuss this example
- - Understand impact of access on agency dimensions, - 14 interventions into 4 common ‘triggers’ of access for women. Increased access to information, goods & services, opportunities, access to markets. -What the impact of Increased income alone had on women’s agency without access triggers to shift women’s control. - Paper, The effect of different access trigger on agency - different case study - Applied Conceptual framework and tool to track shifts. - Time Only look at 2 examples – one from Fiji and one from Sri Lanka. Here is the first one.
- Case Study: Access to goods and services increased and impact on Agency found? Background: Over time, Livelihoods dwindled. Cane production decreased overall Partly due to: Rising costs of production, growing rural urban migration and labour shortage (such as cane cutting gang labour), lack of access to cane-access roads and price of cane per tonne hasn’t increased proportional to increasing costs. Women traditionally participate in supporting roles Weeding, fertilizer application, food for laborers Partnership In 2015 – MDF partnership engaged CJ Singh Share the risk of bringing in and providing mechanical harvesting services Address labour shortage problem. Before/ After Intervention What we didn’t expect – HUGE impact on women’s workload. Before - women in HH worked 4 months in preparation for and during harvesting period. 19 hour working days After - cane harvesting to 2 days. Could sleep at least for 8 hours and participate in other activities (economic or otherwise). Change in Spider Diagram 2 years monitoring, women & HHs interviewed happy due to time saved to feed and accommodate cane-cutting gangs. Outward shift in “Reduction of Work Load” on the spider diagram. With time saved, Households could participate in other activities (household/economic) contributing to overall household well-being and is reflected as an outward movement from 2 to 4 on the Well-being dimension. Case Study illustrates: Access to goods and services increased and wider impact on Agency and captured on this conceptual tool.
- What is impact on agency if income increases alone? Looked at case from SL – Divron Brief background of case Impacts Saw increase in income As high level of influence already - income allocation increased, well-being increased Status in community improved So case where entire pot increase -> women benefited from economic empowerment Alternative case
- Learnt from the field and in our research that Access interventions can impact agency and that women can be empowered economically, even though they are not at point of transaction Further, it Is vital for Economic Programmes, to understand Household and socio-economic dynamics in order to develop more Effective interventions Impact goes beyond income MDF found the Conceptual framework effective in visualizing changes in agency across the 5 country contexts. As highlighted earlier, tracking agency dimensions can also help to make decisions on next steps such as exploring new intervention areas or immediate mitigation strategies. Finally, MDF is still refining this conceptual framework and we understand that it is one of a variety of measurement methods available. We are sharing it with you in the hopes that other programmes will find it useful and adapt it to test in their own programmes to check possible implications of different interventions on agency and design more targeted interventions/results measurement approaches.
- Vinaka.
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