Highlights:

In recent years, the development of new tools has revolutionized the way to measure and monitor women’s empowerment in agriculture.

The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), developed by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in 2010, and its adaptations have been used by 271 organizations in 63 countries.

Building on the WEAI experience, IFPRI, Emory University, Oxford University and the World Bank developed a new metric for measuring women’s empowerment: the Women’s Empowerment Metric for National Statistical Systems (WEMNS).

WEMNS offers a streamlined approach to measuring empowerment, applicable to both agricultural and non-agricultural livelihoods. The metric is based on a questionnaire that can be integrated in large scale surveys. WEMNS was launched in 2023 after validation in four countries.

In 2015, FAO developed and launched the Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women (MDD-W), a simple tool that measures women’s diet and identifies population groups at risk of malnutrition. Like WEMNS, MDD-W can be easily integrated into large-scale surveys. To date, it has been collected in over 85 countries and has been incorporated into the corporate monitoring systems of several international organizations.

FAO has integrated WEMNS and MDD-W into the agricultural surveys of three partner countries – Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the United Republic of Tanzania. The integration enables these countries to measure women’s empowerment and women’s dietary

diversity within agricultural households using a streamlined approach. This information is then shared with relevant ministers, guiding national planning and policy development to create more inclusive and sustainable agrifood systems.