Resource

Building Resilience in Burkina Faso: Understanding women’s empowerment through use of the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI)

In 2016, in conjunction with the launch of the Building the Resilience of Vulnerable Communities in Burkina Faso (BRB) project, Grameen Foundation conducted an assessment leveraging the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI). After completing the endline pro-WEAI, results suggest that women who participated in the BRB project (treatment group) saw improvements in gender parity but very little change in empowerment; however, their spouses’ empowerment visibly improved. In contrast, women in the comparison group experienced improvements in gender parity as well as empowerment, but their spouses saw decreases in empowerment. Despite starting at an empowerment disadvantage at baseline, the treatment group experienced an overall increase in the average number of indicators in which they were classified as adequate while the comparison group saw a decrease in adequacy after controlling for age, sex, and level of education. The research suggests that the BRB intervention may have provided some protection for the treatment group when they faced an economic downturn prior to the endline, indicative of household resilience. Future programming should consider how to meaningfully engage men in savings group formation and access to credit as well as incorporate social norm change activities.