Photo credit: World Bank

The project-level WEAI (pro-WEAI) measures women’s empowerment in various types of agricultural development projects. This version uses the A-WEAI as a starting point, and adds specialized project-relevant modules, designed and tested by the WEAI team, as well as an enhanced livestock module and an add-on module specific to nutrition and health projects. Standardized components of the survey will be comparable across all projects using the pro-WEAI, and specialized project-relevant modules will be comparable within clusters of projects addressing similar pathways to empowerment in the agricultural sector. Additionally, pro-WEAI includes qualitative protocols to add nuance to the quantitative results. The pro-WEAI is not directly comparable to the original Feed the Future WEAI baselines. Pro-WEAI is still undergoing pilot testing; the final version may differ from the information presented here.

Pro-WEAI is made up of 12 indicators that measure three types of agency: intrinsic agency (power within), instrumental agency (power to), and collective agency (power with).

The indicators are grouped by type of agency as follows:

• Intrinsic agency
  • Autonomy in income
  • Self-efficacy
  • Attitudes about intimate partner violence
  • Respect among household members
• Instrumental agency
  • Input in productive decisions
  • Ownership of land and other assets
  • Access to and decisions on financial services
  • Control over use of income
  • Work balance
  • Visiting important locations
• Collective agency
  • Group membership
  • Membership in influential groups

Optional modules about livestock and nutrition/health include additional questions to examine the impacts of agricultural development strategies that emphasize livestock, nutrition, and health as pathways to empowerment.

Pro-WEAI is currently being tested and developed by 13 agricultural development projects in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Mali, Nepal, and Tanzania as part of the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, Phase 2. 

See the description of the Pro-WEAI e-learning course.