The Impact of Cash Transfers on Women's Empowerment: The Case of the Tanzania Social Action Fund

Women’s empowerment has been at the centre of research focus for many decades. Extant literature examined the process, outcome and various challenges. Some claimed substantial success, while others contradicted with evidence of failure. But the success remains a matter of debate due to lack of empirical evidence of actual empowerment of women around the world. The current study aimed to address this gap by taking a case study method. The study critically evaluates 20 cases carefully sampled to include representatives from the entire country of Bangladesh. The study demonstrates popular beliefs about microfinance often misguide even the borrowers and they start living in a fabricated feeling of empowerment, facing real challenges to achieve true empowerment in their lives. The impact of this finding is twofold; firstly there is a theoretical contribution, where the definition of women’s empowerment is proposed to be revisited considering findings from these cases. And lastly, the policy makers at governmental and non-governmental organisations, and multinational donor agencies need to revise their assessment tools for funding.

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Women’s Education May Be Even Better Than We Thought: Estimating the Gains from Education When Schooling Ain’t Learning

10.35489/bsg-rise-wp_2020/049 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Michelle Kaffenberger ◽

Lant Pritchett

Keyword(s):

Child Mortality ◽

Women's Education ◽

Basic Education ◽

Women's Empowerment ◽

Women’S Empowerment ◽

Life Outcomes ◽

Primary Schooling ◽

The Impact ◽

Financial Practices ◽

Attenuation Bias

Women’s schooling has long been regarded as one of the best investments in development. Using two different cross-nationally comparable data sets which both contain measures of schooling, assessments of literacy, and life outcomes for more than 50 countries, we show the association of women’s education (defined as schooling and the acquisition of literacy) with four life outcomes (fertility, child mortality, empowerment, and financial practices) is much larger than the standard estimates of the gains from schooling alone. First, estimates of the association of outcomes with schooling alone cannot distinguish between the association of outcomes with schooling that actually produces increased learning and schooling that does not. Second, typical estimates do not address attenuation bias from measurement error. Using the new data on literacy to partially address these deficiencies, we find that the associations of women’s basic education (completing primary schooling and attaining literacy) with child mortality, fertility, women’s empowerment and the associations of men’s and women’s basic education with positive financial practices are three to five times larger than standard estimates. For instance, our country aggregated OLS estimate of the association of women’s empowerment with primary schooling versus no schooling is 0.15 of a standard deviation of the index, but the estimated association for women with primary schooling and literacy, using IV to correct for attenuation bias, is 0.68, 4.6 times bigger. Our findings raise two conceptual points. First, if the causal pathway through which schooling affects life outcomes is, even partially, through learning then estimates of the impact of schooling will underestimate the impact of education. Second, decisions about how to invest to improve life outcomes necessarily depend on estimates of the relative impacts and relative costs of schooling (e.g., grade completion) versus learning (e.g., literacy) on life outcomes. Our results do share the limitation of all previous observational results that the associations cannot be given causal interpretation and much more work will be needed to be able to make reliable claims about causal pathways.

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Assessing the impact of a combined nutrition counselling and cash transfer intervention on women’s empowerment in rural Bangladesh: a randomised control trial protocol

BMJ Open ◽

10.1136/bmjopen-2020-044263 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (6) ◽

pp. e044263

Author(s):

Elizabeth K Kirkwood ◽

Michael John Dibley ◽

John Frederick Hoddinott ◽

Tanvir Huda ◽

Tracey Lea Laba ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Quantitative Data ◽

Women's Empowerment ◽

Cash Transfer ◽

Women’S Empowerment ◽

Randomised Control Trial ◽

Call Centre ◽

Rural Bangladesh ◽

Nutrition Counselling ◽

The Impact ◽

Unconditional Cash Transfer

IntroductionThere is growing interest in assessing the impact of health interventions, particularly when women are the focus of the intervention, on women’s empowerment. Globally, research has shown that interventions targeting nutrition, health and economic development can affect women’s empowerment. Evidence suggests that women’s empowerment is also an underlying determinant of nutrition outcomes. Depending on the focus of the intervention, different domains of women’s empowerment will be influenced, for example, an increase in nutritional knowledge, or greater control over income and access to resources.ObjectiveThis study evaluates the impact of the Shonjibon Cash and Counselling (SCC) Trial that combines nutrition counselling and an unconditional cash transfer, delivered on a mobile platform, on women’s empowerment in rural Bangladesh.Methods and analysisWe will use a mixed-methods approach, combining statistical analysis of quantitative data from 2840 women in a cluster randomised controlled trial examining the impact of nutrition behaviour change communications (BCCs) and cash transfers on child undernutrition. Pregnant participants will be given a smartphone with a customised app, delivering nutrition BCC messages, and will receive nutrition counselling via a call centre and an unconditional cash transfer. This study is a component of the SCC Trial and will measure women’s empowerment using a composite indicator based on the Project-Level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index, with quantitative data collection at baseline and endline. Thematic analysis of qualitative data, collected through longitudinal interviews with women, husbands and mothers-in-law, will elicit a local understanding of women’s empowerment and the linkages between the intervention and women’s empowerment outcomes. This paper describes the study protocol to evaluate women’s empowerment in a nutrition-specific and sensitive intervention using internationally validated, innovative tools and will help fill the evidence gap on pathways of impact, highlighting areas to target for future programming.Ethics and disseminationEthical approval has been obtained from the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research (Ref. PR 17106) and The University of Sydney (Ref: 2019/840). Findings from this study will be shared in Bangladesh with dissemination sessions in-country and internationally at conferences, and will be published in peer-reviewed journals.

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The impact of self-help groups on pastoral women’s empowerment and agency: A study in Nigeria

Pastoralism Research Policy and Practice ◽

10.1186/s13570-017-0101-5 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Adedamola F. Badejo ◽

Ayodele O. Majekodunmi ◽

Peter Kingsley ◽

James Smith ◽

Susan C. Welburn

Keyword(s):

Women's Empowerment ◽

Women’S Empowerment ◽

Self Help ◽

Self Help Groups ◽

The Impact

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Women's Empowerment in the Philippines: Impact evaluation of the ‘BASIC START’ project

10.21201/2020.6935 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Jaynie Vonk

Keyword(s):

Impact Evaluation ◽

Experimental Approach ◽

Positive Impact ◽

Women's Empowerment ◽

The Philippines ◽

Women’S Empowerment ◽

Autonomous Region ◽

Full Report ◽

Quasi Experimental ◽

The Impact

This evaluation is presented as part of the Effectiveness Review Series 2018/19 on women’s empowerment. The BASIC START (Building Autonomous and Stable Institutions and Communities through Socially Cohesive, Transparent, Accountable and Responsive Transition) in the Bangsamoro' project was carried out in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) in the Philippines between April 2015 and August 2017, by Oxfam together with four implementing partners: Al Mujadilah Development Foundation (AMDF), United Youth of the Philippines Women (UnYPhil-Women), Tarbilang Foundation, and Women Engaged in Action on 1325 (WE Act 1325). The project aimed to promote women's empowerment and peacebuilding in the region. A quasi-experimental approach was used to assess the impact of the project activities in strengthening women’s empowerment. The evaluation used Oxfam's Women's Empowerment (WE) index. Overall, the evaluation found that the BASIC START project had a positive impact on Women's Empowerment in all three levels investigated – personal, relational and environmental. Find out more by reading the evaluation brief or the full report.

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Money of Her Own and the Politics of Women's Empowerment

Contemporary Global Perspectives on Gender Economics - Advances in Finance, Accounting, and Economics ◽

10.4018/978-1-4666-8611-3.ch004 ◽

2015 ◽

pp. 55-81

Author(s):

Shushmita Chatterji Dutt

Keyword(s):

Agricultural Intensification ◽

Women's Empowerment ◽

The State ◽

Women’S Empowerment ◽

Market Forces ◽

State Administration ◽

The Impact ◽

The Way

The impact of micro finance initiatives on poor (often illiterate) women is discussed in this paper. The way women begin to understand market forces and negotiate the best terms for themselves is examined. This seems to link to increasing confidence, a stronger voice and finally negotiating a space for themselves. It is observed that if planned empowerment inputs of any type are also provided, the gains are exponential and go much deeper. This paper draws examples from three initiatives: 1. A micro finance scheme for women introduced in one district of the state of Rajasthan, India; 2. An initiative that was introduced as a subsidiary activity for an agricultural intensification scheme supported by IFAD in four districts of Bangladesh; 3. The profile of one woman in the state of Chhattisgarh, India who has worked with the State Administration to change her own life and that of many other women.

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Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture: A Systematic Review of Impact Pathways to Nutrition Outcomes

Advances in Nutrition ◽

10.1093/advances/nmaa103 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Indu K Sharma ◽

Sabina Di Prima ◽

Dirk Essink ◽

Jacqueline E W Broerse

Keyword(s):

Systematic Review ◽

Food Production ◽

Women's Empowerment ◽

Food Prices ◽

Women’S Empowerment ◽

Local Institutions ◽

Impact Pathways ◽

Study Results ◽

Nutrition Sensitive ◽

The Impact

ABSTRACT The role of agriculture in reducing undernutrition is widely recognized, yet there is also consensus on the need to make the sector nutrition-sensitive. Evidence on the impact pathways from nutrition-sensitive agriculture (NSA) interventions, agricultural interventions with specific nutrition objectives, and actions detailing each temporal stage to reach nutrition outcomes is limited, however. We thus synthesized study results regarding impact of NSA interventions on nutrition outcomes relating to undernutrition, and constructed an impact pathway by mapping the evidence on each temporal stage from interventions to nutrition outcomes. We used Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses to conduct and report our systematic review of studies on NSA interventions implemented in low- and lower-middle-income countries. Forty-three studies that met the inclusion criteria were extracted and synthesized across impact and pathways analyses. We carried out a thematic analysis of the effect of NSA interventions using evidence-based indicators and constructed the pathways by adopting a published framework on agriculture to nutrition pathways. Our findings reveal that NSA interventions can significantly improve dietary practices, and have the potential to enhance care practices and reduce occurrence of diseases, indicating their effectiveness in simultaneously addressing multiple determinants of undernutrition. However, NSA interventions have a lesser impact on nutritional status. NSA interventions lead to nutrition outcomes through 5 key pathways: food production, nutrition-related knowledge, agricultural income, women's empowerment, and strengthening of local institutions. We emphasize the need to carefully design, implement, and evaluate interventions with consideration for factors affecting impact pathways. Future research should focus on the effect of interventions combining multisector components, and pathways through non-food-production-related income, women's empowerment, strengthening of local institutions, food prices at intervention level, and expenditure on health care.

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