Nathaniel Ferguson

Measuring gender and social norms in agrifood systems: Evidence from Nigeria and Tanzania

Development of a Women’s Empowerment metric for Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WE-WASH)

There is a growing focus on gender-sensitive approaches and women’s empowerment in the water, sanitation, and hygiene sectors. At the same time, there is a lack of metrics to measure women’s empowerment in the WASH sector. Such metrics are important for understanding the types of programmatic interventions that are most needed for addressing women’s empowerment, as well as for assessing their impacts on women’s empowerment. In this report, we describe the development of a Women’s Empowerment metrics for Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WE-WASH). We collected data from individual women and men in 812 households in Malawi and 826 households in Nepal. Using the data, we develop 14 indicators and establish cutoff thresholds (i.e., whether the individual is empowered) in the areas of intrinsic, instrumental, and collective agency in WASH; instrumental and intrinsic agency in menstrual hygiene management; and the empowerment environment (or resources for empowerment). In each country, we observe differences in empowerment levels between women and men, that favor men on most outcomes. Notably, in both countries, we find that women are much less likely than men to contribute to WASH infrastructure decisions, and most women are spending an undue amount of time contributing to WASH-related labor. In Nepal especially, agency related to menstrual hygiene management is also a substantial area of disempowerment for women.

Examining the gender digital divide: A case study from rural Kenya

Worldwide, cell phones are used by 5.4 billion people. They are becoming increasingly prevalent in the rural areas of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), providing smallholder farmers with access to agricultural markets. If they reduce information asymmetries between women and men farmers, they can also contribute to closing the gender gap in agricultural productivity. So far, however, digital innovations have had limited success in transforming agricultural systems. This may be due, in part, to the gender gap in cell-phone use. Rural women in LMICs—particularly those with low incomes, low literacy levels, or disabilities—are less likely than rural men to have access to cell phones, the Internet, digital currency, or other digital services. This policy note summarizes research intended to shed light on the impact of cell-phone ownership and use on the gender gap in agricultural productivity in LMICs.