Economic Empowerment

Investing in women is recognized not only as the right thing to do but also the smart thing to do. Mounting evidence demonstrates that increases in women’s income lead to improvements in children’s health, nutrition and education. But more rigorous evaluation of projects aimed at women’s economic development is crucial to maintain their support and apply lessons learned to future projects. To address this need, ICRW is working with UNIFEM and the World Bank to demonstrate and measure the impact of women’s economic development programs on women’s empowerment and broader development goals.

The Results-based Initiative is implementing six innovative projects aimed at increasing women’s economic capacity. The projects include providing time-saving technology to bamboo handicraft producers in Laos and Cambodia and business support services to women micro-entrepreneurs in Peru. ICRW, with local partners, will measure the projects’ impact on women’s decision-making capabilities, control over resources, personal security and autonomy. ICRW anticipates that the resulting best practices and lessons learned will generate further action on women’s economic empowerment as a priority area for development programs overall.

ICRW worked with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), the German development agency, and its private sector partners with helping cotton farmers in sub-Saharan Africa increase their yields and improve the quality of their crops. ICRW assessed all aspects of the project to ensure that men and women equally benefit from project services, and that women are paid for their labor.

By collaborating with private ginning companies and cotton producer associations, the project is providing farmers access to resources such as fertilizer and pesticides, as well as farming and business training to help increase the value of their returns from cotton. Producing higher quality cotton will allow farmers to sell their crop to new and broader markets.

The Gender, Land and Asset Survey was developed and piloted by ICRW and its partners, Associates Research Uganda, Limited and the University of KwaZulu-Natal to measure the full spectrum of women’s and men’s property rights – including ownership, use, control and decision making over land, housing and productive assets, such as small farm equipment. The first round of the survey interviewed more than 2,000 men and women in South Africa and Uganda about their relationship to property. The survey was able to quantitatively demonstrate differences not only in women’s and men’s ownership of assets but also differences in documentation and decision-making and point to different socioeconomic factors and life-cycle stages that influence women’s property rights. The second round of the Gender, Land and Asset Survey focuses on understanding the nature of ownership, use, and decision-making within couples living in a context of customary land tenure.

As a pioneer in the effort to quantify women’s property rights on a large scale, ICRW is using the findings of this survey to demonstrate the links among property rights, women's empowerment and domestic violence; to promote more widespread and rigorous measurement of gendered asset rights; and to identify policies that can improve women's rights over land and assets.

Related Resources

• ICRW's Gender, Land and Asset Survey used as case study
• Publication in which the above case study appears - A Toolkit on Collecting Gender & Assets Data in Qualitative & Quantitative Program Evaluations by Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project (GAAP)