The Women Empowerment in Livestock Index (WELI) is a tool designed to measure the impact of livestock interventions on women's empowerment in agriculture. It consists of qualitative and quantitative components that analyze demographic data and assess empowerment through structured surveys, focusing on key empowerment indicators. WELI aids various organizations in developing strategies that enhance women's empowerment while considering the disempowerment factors in livestock programs.

1. The definition of WELI
The Women Empowerment in Livestock Index (WELI)
is a tool designed to help project implementers
measure the impact of their interventions on the
empowerment of women involved in livestock
keeping.
The objective
1. To explore to what extent women’s empowerment
is enhanced during a livestock program or
intervention.
2. To understand what component of a livestock
intervention affects what domains of women’s
empowerment.
3. To identify specific sources of disempowerment
for programs to address.
The goal is to create a body of knowledge on the link
between livestock development and women’s
empowerment.
How WELI works
WELI contains a qualitative and a quantitative component:
1. Basic household and individual demographic characteristics are
collected from individual respondents (e.g., household size, age).
2. The qualitative component explores local meanings of
empowerment through discussions with groups and individuals.
3. The quantitative component is gathered from individual women
(and men from the same household) through a structured survey
implemented using the Open Data Kit (ODK software).
4. The quantitative survey explores 13 indicators of empowerment
(decision making around livestock agriculture and livestock
production; access to assets and financial services; participation
in groups; workload and autonomy among others) across two
species: the one that is most important to the respondent’s
livelihood and the one most important to the household
livelihood.
5. The quantitative data is used to construct the individual index (i.e.
the level of empowerment of the respondents) which comprises
of individual values and the difference in indicator values between
women and men respondents in the same household.
6. Comparison of baseline and endline data provides granular
findings on what intervention area impacts which dimension of
empowerment.
7. Qualitative findings are used to explain the processes of change
captured in the quantitative component in the local context.
Who is using WELI
• Numerous ILRI projects
• CGIAR Centres
• CGIAR initiatives
• Feed the Future Innovation Laboratory projects
• IDRC Livestock Vaccine Innovation Fund (LVIF) projects
• UN Women Georgia
• The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations
• Zoetis – the world’s largest global animal health company
• Various faculty members and students across the globe
Application of the data
Evidence from both the qualitative and quantitative analysis provide
evidence that is used to shape livestock project interventions in
support of women’s empowerment. Projects can leverage livestock
interventions that are found to enhance empowerment; improve
these interventions based on their impact on various domains of
empowerment; focus on strengthening areas that mostly contribute
to women’s disempowerment.
The solution
WELI helps assess what interventions work
best at providing empowering opportunities
for women through key areas of livestock
keeping (animal health, breeding, feeding, use
of livestock products, processing and
marketing) and across 3 dimensions of
empowerment (intrinsic, collective and
instrumental agency).
WELI is aligned to the Women’s Empowerment
in Agriculture Index (WEAI) which focuses on
crops - and complements it by focusing on
livestock (while also looking at crops).
WELI is complemented by the Women in
Livestock in Business Index (WELBI) that
measures empowerment of women in livestock
business.
Alessandra Galiè - a.galie@cgiar.org, Immaculate Omondi - i.omondi@cgiar.org
Box 30709 Nairobi Kenya, +254 20 422 3000, ilri.org
This document is licensed for use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International Licence. May 2022. ILRI thanks all donors and organizations which globally support its work through their contributions to the CGIAR Trust Fund.
The challenge
Livestock keeping can serve as an
important entry point for
supporting women’s
empowerment. Women’s
empowerment in turn, is necessary
for livestock development.
However, gender-blind
development programs can
unintentionally result in women’s
disempowerment.
Diverse strategies exist to support
women’s empowerment through
livestock, yet they are difficult to
prioritise without a reliable and
adapted means to measure
empowerment.
The WELI tool offers the solution.
What next
We are currently shortening the WELI and making it more user
friendly. We are looking into capturing empowerment beyond the
individual level; developing a participatory tool; and better
integrating the quantitative and qualitative components. We will
soon engage in meta-analysis across projects to provide global
evidence on the link between livestock development and women’s
empowerment.
Isabelle Baltenweck, Alessandra Galiè, Immaculate Omondi and Judy Kimani
Women Empowerment in Livestock Index (WELI)
May 2022