Designing for empowerment impact in agricultural development projects: Experimental evidence from the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) project in Banglades - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Designing for empowerment impact in agricultural development projects: Experimental evidence from the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) project in Banglades write by Quisumbing, Agnes R.. This book was released on 2020-08-12. Designing for empowerment impact in agricultural development projects: Experimental evidence from the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) project in Banglades available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The importance of women’s roles for nutrition-sensitive agricultural projects is increasingly recognized, yet little is known about whether such projects improve women’s empowerment and gender equality. We study the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) pilot project, which was implemented as a cluster-randomized controlled trial by the Government of Bangladesh. The project’s treatment arms included agricultural training, nutrition behavior change communication (BCC), and gender sensitization trainings to husbands and wives together – with these components combined additively, such that the impact of gender sensitization could be distinguished from that of agriculture and nutrition trainings. Empowerment was measured using the internationally-validated project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI), and attitudes regarding gender roles were elicited from both men and women, to explore potentially gender-transformative impacts. Our study finds that ANGeL increased both women’s and men’s empowerment, raised the prevalence of households achieving gender parity, and led to small improvements in the gender attitudes of both women and men. We find significant increases in women’s empowerment scores and empowerment status from all treatment arms but with no significant differences across these. We find no evidence of unintended impacts on workloads and we note inconclusive evidence of possible increases in intimate partner violence (IPV). Our results also suggest some potential benefits of bundling nutrition and gender components with an agricultural development intervention; however, many of these benefits seem to be driven by bundling nutrition with agriculture. While we cannot assess the extent to which including men and women within the same treatment arms contributed to our results, it is plausible that the positive impacts of all treatment arms on women’s empowerment outcomes may have arisen from implementation modalities that provided information to both husbands and wives when they were together. The role of engaging men and women jointly in interventions is a promising area for future research.
Designing for Empowerment Impact in Agricultural Development Projects
Designing for Empowerment Impact in Agricultural Development Projects - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Designing for Empowerment Impact in Agricultural Development Projects write by Agnes R. Quisumbing. This book was released on 2020. Designing for Empowerment Impact in Agricultural Development Projects available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle.
Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) evaluation results
Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) evaluation results - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) evaluation results write by Ahmed, Akhter. This book was released on 2023-01-26. Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) evaluation results available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The relationships between agricultural diversity, dietary diversity, and gender norms are complex and multi-dimensional. To better understand these links, and how to most effectively promote nutrition- and gender-sensitive agriculture in Bangladesh, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) designed the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) pilot project, implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture, Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh. ANGeL aimed to identify actions and investments in agriculture that will help increase farm household income, improve nutrition, and empower women. Using rigorous research, namely, a randomized controlled trial design, IFPRI assessed impacts of the ANGeL project interventions on various outcomes. Over the 17-month implementation period, with no inputs provided to participating farm households besides knowledge from trainings, ANGeL generated useful lessons on strengthening the agriculture-nutrition-gender nexus in the country. Both men and women benefited from agricultural trainings, yet women learned more from the same trainings. Crop diversity increased substantially in homestead gardens, mainly due to ANGeL’s emphasis on homestead food production from nutritious crops. Farmers also adopted improved production practices. We consistently found that women were more likely to apply knowledge gained from agricultural production trainings to adopt various types of improved agriculture production practices, such as pest disease and control, seed production and care, and use of quality fertilizer. Similarly, improvements in nutrition knowledge were far greater for women and when trainings were combined. These improvements in knowledge had impacts on nutrition outcomes, with increases in household diet quality and child dietary diversity over the project period. The strongest improvements in empowerment came when agriculture, nutrition, and gender sensitization trainings were combined. ANGeL’s household approach empowered women and men in unique ways: while women became more empowered in asset ownership and income decisions, men became more empowered in production and income decisions in select interventions. Attitudes related to gender of both women and men also improved, with more women recognizing that they make important contributions to their communities. ANGeL is the first ministry-led initiative that uses a rigorous impact evaluation to develop an evidence base to design and implement a national program. The ANGeL project is a significant step towards filling critical knowledge and action gaps in the country on promoting nutrition-and gender-sensitive agriculture.
Can agricultural development projects empower women? A synthesis of mixed methods evaluations using pro-WEAI in the gender, agriculture, and assets project (phase 2) portfolio
Can agricultural development projects empower women? A synthesis of mixed methods evaluations using pro-WEAI in the gender, agriculture, and assets project (phase 2) portfolio - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Can agricultural development projects empower women? A synthesis of mixed methods evaluations using pro-WEAI in the gender, agriculture, and assets project (phase 2) portfolio write by Quisumbing, Agnes R.. This book was released on 2022-10-14. Can agricultural development projects empower women? A synthesis of mixed methods evaluations using pro-WEAI in the gender, agriculture, and assets project (phase 2) portfolio available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Agricultural development projects increasingly include women’s empowerment and gender equality among their objectives, but efforts to evaluate their impact have been stymied by the lack of comparable measures. Moreover, the context-specificity of empowerment implies that a quantitative measure alone will be inadequate to capture the nuances of the empowerment process. The Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, Phase 2 (GAAP2), a portfolio of 13 agricultural development projects in nine countries in South Asia and Africa, developed the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) and qualitative protocols for impact evaluations. Pro-WEAI covers three major types of agencies: instrumental, intrinsic, and collective. This paper synthesizes the results of 11 mixed-methods evaluations to assess these projects’ empowerment impacts. The projects implemented the pro-WEAI and its associated qualitative protocols in their impact evaluations. Our synthesis finds mixed, and mostly null impacts on aggregate indicators of women’s empowerment, with positive impacts more likely in the South Asian, rather than African, cases. There were more significant impacts on instrumental agency indicators and collective agency indicators, reflecting the group-based approaches used. We found few significant impacts on intrinsic agency indicators, except for those projects that intentionally addressed gender norms. Quantitative analysis does not show an association between the types of strategies that projects implemented and their impacts, except for capacity building strategies. This finding reveals the limitations of quantitative analysis, given the small number of projects involved. The qualitative studies provide more nuance and insight: some base level of empowerment and forms of agency may be necessary for women to participate in project activities, to benefit or further increase their empowerment. Our results highlight the need for projects to focus specifically on empowerment, rather than assume that projects aiming to reach and benefit women automatically empower them. Our study also shows the value of both a common metric to compare empowerment impacts across projects and contexts and qualitative work to understand and contextualize these impacts.
Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) Baseline Study
Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) Baseline Study - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) Baseline Study write by Tauseef, Salauddin. This book was released on 2017-06-09. Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) Baseline Study available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. 1.1 Background Bangladesh has made commendable progress in domestic food production through public investments in agricultural research and extension, public and private investments in irrigation, and liberalization of agricultural input markets. In the early 1970s, Bangladesh was a food-deficit country with a population of about 75 million people. Today, the population has more than doubled, and the country is nearly self-sufficient in rice production, which has tripled over the past three decades. However, Bangladesh’s performance in improving child and maternal nutrition has been less satisfactory. Despite its success in reducing child stunting, the rate of stunting in Bangladesh (36 percent in 2014) remains high (NIPORT 2015). Bangladesh also continues to struggle with deficiencies in micronutrients such as iron, zinc, iodine, and vitamin A. Such deficiencies reflect poor diets that are rice-dominated, monotonous, and lacking diversity (Ahmed et al. 2013). Anemia (in part due to iron deficiency) is estimated to affect 26 percent of nonpregnant, non-lactating women, whereas 42 percent suffer from iodine deficiency. About 28 percent women of reproductive age are underweight (NIPORT 2015). In preschool children, the rates of anemia, iodine, and vitamin A deficiencies are 33 percent, 40 percent, and 20 percent, respectively (ICDDR,B 2013). Therefore, government policies and strategies underscore the importance of strengthening the linkage between agriculture and nutrition. Agriculture provides a source of food and nutrients, contributes to income, and affects food prices. Exploring agriculture and nutrition linkages in Bangladesh using data from a multi-round district level panel, a study finds that rice yields are associated with earlier introduction of complementary foods to young children, as well as increases in their weight-for-height (Heady and Hoddinott 2016). Agriculture can also have effects on women’s health, nutrition, empowerment and time allocation, which can have important consequences for their ability to care for family members. Given these links, agriculture has the potential to be a strong driver of nutrition. However, that potential is not being fully realized in Bangladesh because, traditionally, nutrition and agricultural policies have been uncoordinated. Low status of women and gender gaps in health and education contribute to chronic child undernutrition (Smith et al. 2003) and food insecurity (von Grebmer et al. 2009), even when other determinants of food security, such as per capita incomes, improve. According to an IFPRI study, women are key actors within the food system, but are historically disempowered in Bangladesh in terms of leadership in the community, control of resources, and control of income (Sraboni, Quisumbing, and Ahmed 2014a). The lack of women’s empowerment weakens the links between agriculture and nutrition. Despite increases in 2 women’s participation in agriculture in Bangladesh in recent years (Asaduzzaman 2010), women face persistent obstacles, particularly due to social and economic constraints, which limit their further inclusion in agriculture. Women have limited control over agricultural assets, as well as limited mobility to go to markets to sell agricultural produce, often relying on husbands and sons to take produce to market. 1.2 Motivation for the Study IFPRI research in Bangladesh, using data from a nationally representative household survey conducted by IFPRI, reveals that women’s empowerment plays a key role in improving household food security and dietary diversity of children, women, and other household members (Sraboni et al. 2014b; Malapit et al. 2015). The study also shows that agricultural production diversity is associated with dietary diversity (Sraboni et al. 2014b). Further, IFPRI research in Bangladesh shows that nutrition behavior change communication (BCC) training imparted to women and men in rural households leads to significant improvements in child nutrition and complementary feeding practices (Ahmed et al. 2016; Menon et al. 2016). Motivated by research-based evidence, IFPRI researchers developed a concept note to strengthen the agriculture-nutrition-gender nexus in Bangladesh and presented it to the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA), Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh in June 2014. Based on the concept note, an inter-ministerial committee of the Government of Bangladesh approved a pilot research project entitled, “Orienting Agriculture Toward Improved Nutrition and Women’s Empowerment”, also known as “Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages”(ANGeL), for implementation by the MOA, with technical assistance from IFPRI and Helen Keller International (HKI), and an evaluation led by IFPRI. The Minister of Agriculture officially launched the pilot project in October 2015. The project is jointly funded by the Government of Bangladesh and USAID. 1.3 The Baseline Report As part of the evaluation of the ANGeL Project, IFPRI carried out a baseline survey of project participants and a comparison group of households just before the start of project interventions. This report presents the results of the ANGeL baseline survey. It is organized in nine sections. Section 2 describes the salient features of the ANGeL Project. Section 3 presents the progress of the ANGeL Project to date. Section 4 describes the baseline survey. Section 5 gives a profile of the survey households. Section 6 provides the land tenure status of sample households and findings on agricultural production and practices. Section 7 presents patterns of food consumption and nutrition. Section 8 provides findings on women’s empowerment. Section 9 summarizes the main findings and provides conclusions.
