WEAI presentation to GIZ

1. USING PRO-WEAI IN THE FIELD
Tips and advice for implementation
GAAP2 Study Team
International Food Policy Research Institute
GIZ Lighthouse Talk
13 December 2021

2. Women’s Empowerment Metric
for National Statistical Systems
WEAI A-WEAI Pro-WEAI
Core Health &
Nutrition
Livestock
Market
Inclusion
i-WEAI
WEAI A-WEAI

Optional add-on
modules
 
WEMNS
Integrated
WEAI
Measuring empowerment & the WEAI family of indicators

3. Pro-WEAI (2019)
Each indicator receives an equal proportion
(1/12) of the overall weight
Empowered if adequate in 75% of indicators
Pro-WEAI (2021)
Each indicator receives an equal proportion
(1/10) of the overall weight
Empowered if adequate in 80% of indicators

4. Many projects have now implemented pro-WEAI in very
different contexts

5. We are often asked two types of questions about using pro-
WEAI in the field…
In this lighthouse talk we will answer 10 common
questions that we’ve received from pro-WEAI users.
Considering not all projects will
be able to complete the full
questionnaires because of time
and budget constraints, which
elements are crucial for
projects to implement for the
approach to be still beneficial? Is
there a minimum threshold of
indicators?
What are the
challenges you have
faced in applying pro-
WEAI and how would
you recommend
avoiding/minimizing
these?

6. Design Questions

7. Q1: I’m interested in women’s empowerment. What if I don’t
interview men, to save money?
 If you only interview women, you can measure their empowerment using 3DE.
 However, you will not be able to compute men’s 3DE nor the GPI. You won’t
know about gender equality.
 This might be important if you’re interested in potential backlash of programs
targeted to women, or if you have a gender-transformative project.
 To know whether gender norms are changing, you need to look at women AND
men. You can’t judge whether a project is gender-transformative by looking at
women alone.
 You also won’t know whether a gap exists because of gender, or whether there
are other reasons the gap exists. For example: is it that only women lack access
to credit, or do men also lack credit? Knowing this is very important for
programming purposes.

8. Q2: My budget is very tight. Can I drop some pro-WEAI
indicators? Can I drop a domain and still have it be called
pro-WEAI?
 We have reduced the number of indicators from 12 to 10, and number of questions
required per indicator as well. Check the questionnaire carefully for the optional
questions.
 Next, check whether some of your questionnaire covers things that are similar to pro-
WEAI. There may be opportunities to reconcile them (as we have done with IFAD I-
WEAI). For example, if you are asking land ownership questions, you can tie that to the
household roster to identify who owns land.
 Or, you could reduce the number of questions (items) that make up an indicator. This is
the approach taken in the IFAD R-WEAI (reduced WEAI), which keeps the same number
of indicators, but fewer questions for each indicator. Garbero and Perge (2017) reduced
the number of questions using multiple correspondence analysis.
 If you need to cut further, consider which indicators are least related to your theory of
change. If you drop an indicator, you will have to figure out adequacy and pro-WEAI
scores based on the reduced number of indicators.
 Keep in mind that all of these changes require significant adaptations and are no
longer comparable to pro-WEAI.

9. Q3: If I have a livestock or a health & nutrition project, how
can I be sure that I capture aspects of empowerment related
to these?
 You can use the pro-WEAI livestock
module, or you can use the WELI.
 The WELI incorporates pro-WEAI but
has a more extended set of
questions on livestock and
decisionmaking around livestock.
 For a nutrition project, use the pro-
WEAI H&N module. If you are
working in India, you may also want
to consider the WENI.

10. Q4: I heard that pro-WEAI is only good for agriculture. But
my project involves training women in small-scale
processing and sales. What should I use?
 The pro-WEAI for market inclusion (pro-WEAI+MI) would be your best
option.

11. Implementation and field protocols

12. Q5: Respondents seem reluctant to answer the pro-WEAI
questions. What should I do?
 Try not to put the pro-WEAI questions at the end of the survey or following
especially tedious modules (e.g., plot-level agricultural production). This
should help to reduce respondent fatigue on pro-WEAI.
 Check whether the respondent can answer questions without someone
listening.
 If possible, have respondents interviewed by interviewers of the same sex.
 Try randomizing the order of questions in the item set.

13. Q6: Can I save costs by doing a phone survey instead of
face-to-face interviews?
 Use of phone surveys has increased during the pandemic, but pro-WEAI is not
validated for phone surveys.
 Phone surveys are not a good substitute for face-to-face interviews, especially on
women’s empowerment, because:
o Women are less likely to have cell phones, especially poorer (and less
empowered) women, potentially biasing your sample (check women’s phone
ownership rates).
o Phone surveys are much harder to establish rapport, which is important for
many pro-WEAI questions.
o It is impossible to verify that the respondent is alone and cannot be
overheard. Many women take calls on speakerphone setting, which further
complicates privacy and biases responses.
o Phone surveys need to be kept shorter (ideally 15-20 minutes), which is too
short for pro-WEAI.

14. Interpretation questions

15. Q7: I used pro-WEAI in an impact evaluation and the results
do not make sense
 What is the theory of change of your project? Are you affecting some
domains of empowerment more than others, for example, instrumental
agency?
 Look at the indicator-by-indicator results. That will tell you which
domains/indicators are most affected by your project.
 Use qualitative work to help you unpack the results.

16. Q8: I collected pro-WEAI, but I can’t tell whether women who
are more educated are more empowered. I also don’t know
whether empowered women are better at rearing livestock.
 Did you collect a household roster with the age and education of others in
the household?
 Did you collect data on livestock, and who within the household owns
livestock?
 It is very important to collect not only pro-WEAI, but also basic
information about the household and its members, and the outcomes
that your project wants to affect (see theory of change). Without
collecting this information, you won’t know the relationship between
empowerment and other outcomes.

17. Q9: I know that women in my project area are poor and
disempowered. But the pro-WEAI results show that 80% of
them are empowered! How can that be?
 Empowerment diagnostics from projects are likely to be different from numbers
from nationally representative samples.
 If your project requires having livestock or a plot of land to participate, it’s likely
that women participants will be empowered with respect to assets. Similarly, in
group-based projects, participants will be empowered with respect to group
membership. Look at project eligibility criteria and see if some will automatically
classify women as empowered.
 Solution 1: Adjust the empowerment threshold. Keep in mind this won’t be
comparable to other countries in the portfolio.
 Solution 2: Do qualitative work and triangulate! Try to understand what are the
aspects of disempowerment that are important.
 Solution 3: Consider intersectionality. Women may be faring well as a whole, but
are there areas of disadvantage? Caste, ethnicity, race?

18. Pro-WEAI Distance
Learning Course
 Pro-WEAI Foundations module
available now (Eng) and Jan 2022 (Fr)
 Survey Fieldwork, Qualitative Analysis
modules coming in 2022
 Digital Certification upon course
completion
 Sign up for the course!
elearning.foodsecurityportal.org
Q10: Where can I learn more about pro-WEAI?