Hazel Malapit and Jessica Heckert POLICY SEMINAR Introducing pro-WEAI complementary indicators for nutrition- sensitive agriculture and market inclusion projects MAR 2, 2023 - 9:00 TO 10:30AM EST

1. Pro-WEAI complementary
indicators for nutrition-
sensitive agriculture and
market inclusion projects
Hazel Malapit and Jessica Heckert
Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project Phase 2 (GAAP2)
International Food Policy Research Institute
IFPRI Policy Seminar | March 2, 2023

2. Complementary indicators for pro-WEAI: Why?
 Since 2012, the launch of WEAI, we have
continually adapted WEAI to meet the
needs of its users
 In 2019, we worked with 13 projects to co-
develop pro-WEAI, to meet demands of
projects for a measure of women’s
empowerment for project use (Gender,
Assets and Agriculture, Project Phase 2)
o To highlight aspects of empowerment
projects thought important
o To assess empowerment impacts of
agricultural development projects

3. Specialized projects may require additional indicators
to capture aspects of women’s agency and
empowerment
 Nutrition-sensitive agriculture
projects
 Market inclusion projects
Photo credit: Melissa Cooperman
Photo credit: Aminul Khandake

4. We start with pro-WEAI as the base
 Three types of agency
o Intrinsic (power within)
o Instrumental (power to)
o Collective (power with)
 10 indicators
 Co-developed with 13
agricultural development
projects

6. Pro-WEAI for Health and Nutrition
(pro-WEAI+HN)
Jessica Heckert, Elena M. Martinez, Greg Seymour, Audrey Pereira, Shalini
Roy, Sunny S. Kim, Hazel Malapit, Gender Assets and Agriculture Project
Phase 2 (GAAP2) Health and Nutrition Study Team
weai.ifpri.info

7. Photo credits: Julie Gostlaw, (ANGeL)
Many agricultural development projects have nutrition-
sensitive objectives.
To understand the ways in which nutrition-sensitive
agriculture projects empower women, we needed
measures of health- and nutrition- related agency.
Photo credit: Zillus Rhman (FAARM)

8. Development of the Health and Nutrition Module
Necessary characteristics
o Consider the food, health, and care paradigm (UNICEF)
o Life-cycle sensitive: pregnancy, lactation, infancy and
early childhood
o Consider animal-source foods, which are often produced
in nutrition-sensitive agriculture interventions, but may
not be consumed by the most vulnerable
Methodological steps
o Cognitive interviewing
o Psychometric analysis to determine dimensionality
o Define adequacy cutoffs using Alkire-Foster methods

10. Percent of women achieving adequacy,
by +HN indicator and region
84.4
84.5
58.8
77.0
70.2
63.1
72.2
71.7
74.2
51.0
77.8
82.4
36.9
61.0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Decides on own health and diet
Decides on health and diet during pregnancy
Decides on child's diet
Decides on weaning and breastfeeding
Decides to seek healthcare
Decides to purchase food and health products
Has access to food and health products
Bangladesh Burkina Faso and Mali

11. Recommendations for use
 Use +HN in addition to core pro-WEAI, because it assesses
different domains
 Seven indicators are not designed to be aggregated
 Some indicators only apply to specific lifecycle phases (e.g.,
pregnancy), select what is needed
 Pair pro-WEAI+HN with other nutrition- and diet-related outcomes
 Compatible with common impact evaluation designs
 Using pro-WEAI+HN can contribute to evidence on how nutrition-
sensitive agriculture may foster women’s empowerment and the
extent to which women’s empowerment contributes to nutrition
and health outcomes.

12. Pro-WEAI for Market Inclusion
(pro-WEAI+MI)
Hazel Malapit, Jessica Heckert, Ygué Patrice Adegbola, Géraud Fabrice Crinot, Sarah Eissler, Simone Faas,
Geoffroy Gantoli, Kenan Kalagho, Elena M. Martinez, Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Grace Mswero, Emily Myers,
Diston Mzungu, Audrey Pereira, Crossley Pinkstaff, Agnes Quisumbing, Catherine Ragasa, Deborah Rubin,
Elizabeth Salazar, Greg Seymour, Salauddin Tauseef, and the Gender Assets and Agriculture Project Phase
2 (GAAP2) Market Inclusion Study Team
weai.ifpri.info

13. Empowerment and Market Inclusion
 Is market inclusion conducive to women’s empowerment?
 We won’t know unless we measure it. We adapt the pro-WEAI to cover multiple
stages and different types of value chain actors
 Iterative, mixed-methods approach
 Based on work in the Philippines, Bangladesh, Benin, Malawi
Increased market
orientation
Increase in
rural nonfarm
enterprises
Increase in
non-agricultural
employment
Migration and
urbanization

15. Recommendations for use
 Sampling strategy needs to be designed
to capture the key actors in a value chain
 Market inclusion indicators cannot stand
alone; they must be interpreted alongside
the core pro-WEAI indicators
 Qualitative data collection is essential to
triangulate findings and fill in missing gaps
 Not all market inclusion indicators will be
relevant for all value chains. Users should
rely on contextual knowledge to select
which market inclusion indicators to
prioritize

16. Resources
 Eissler, S., Diatta, A., Heckert, J., & Nordehn, C. (2021). “A qualitative assessment of a gender-sensitive
agricultural training program in Benin: Findings on program experience and women’s empowerment across key
agricultural value chains.” IFPRI Discussion Paper.
 Hannan, A., Heckert, J., James‐Hawkins, L., & Yount, K. M. (2020). “Cognitive interviewing to improve women’s
empowerment questions in surveys: Application to the health and nutrition and intrahousehold relationships
modules for the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index.” Maternal & Child Nutrition, 16(1),
e12871.
 Heckert, J., Martinez, E. M., Seymour, G., Pereira, | Audrey, Roy, S., Kim, S. S., Malapit, H., & Pereira, A. (2022).
“Development and validation of a health and nutrition module for the project-level Women’s Empowerment in
Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI+HN).” Maternal & Child Nutrition, e13464.
 Malapit, H., Ragasa, C., Martinez, E., Rubin, D., Seymour, G., & Quisumbing, A. (2020). “Empowerment in
Agricultural Value Chains: Mixed Methods Evidence from the Philippines.” Journal of Rural Studies 76: 240–53.
 Quisumbing, A., Heckert, J., Faas, S., Ramani, G., Raghunathan, K., Malapit, H., & Pro-WEAI for Market
Inclusion Study Team. (2021). “Women’s empowerment and gender equality in agricultural value chains: evidence
from four countries in Asia and Africa.” Food Security, 13(5), 1101–1124.
 Ragasa, C., Malapit, H., Rubin, D., Myers, E., Pereira, A., Martinez, E., Heckert, J., Seymour, G., Mzungu, D.,
Kalagho, K., Kazembe, C., Thunde, J., & Mswelo, G. (2021). “‘It takes two’: Women’s empowerment in
agricultural value chains in Malawi.” IFPRI Discussion Paper.
weai.ifpri.info

17. Funding support was provided by:
 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
 CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) (led by IFPRI)
 CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) (led by IFPRI)
 Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in partnership with the
African Union Development Agency, New Partnership for Africa’s Development (AUDA-
NEPAD)
 Millennium Challenge Corporation
 United States Agency for International Development