Multiple uses of water in irrigated areas: a case study from Sri Lanka

Water management / Water allocation / Water use efficiency / Irrigated farming / Water resources development / Water policy / Water quality / Domestic water / Water users' associations / Water rights / Gender / Households / Pricing / Water costs / Case studies / Sri Lanka / Kirindi Oya

Empowering women to achieve food security:

CONTENTS: Brief 1. Overview / Agnes R. Quisumbing and Ruth S. Meinzen-Dick Brief 2. Land Rights / Eve Crowley Brief 3. Water Rights / Barbara Van Koppen Brief 4. Rights to Livestock / Beth A. Miller Brief 5. Technology / Thelma R. Paris, Hilary Sims Feldstein, and Guadalupe Duron Brief 6. Education / Elizabeth M. King and Harold Alderman Brief 7. Labor Markets and Employment / Ruthanne Deutsch, Suzanne Duryea, and Claudia Piras Brief 8. Health and Nutrition / Stuart Gillespie Brief 9. Social Capital / Mercy S. Dikito-Wachtmeister Brief 10. Microfinance / Manohar Sharma Brief 11. Safety Nets / Michelle Adato and Shelley Feldman Brief 12. Law and Legal Reform / Gita GopalFood security., Women Social conditions., Gender issues., Agricultural technology, Agricultural growth, Childcare and work, Gender, Property rights, Education, Natural resource management,

Property rights, collective action and technologies for natural resource management: a conceptual framework

Environmental management, Gender, Capacity,

Increasing the effective participation of women in food and nutrition security in Africa

What can be done to increase the effective participation of women in food and nutrition security in Africa? This brief advocates a two-pronged approach. First, eradicate discrimination against women, and second, promote catch-up by implementing more active measures in key areas such as control over land, water, and other assets, and investment in education, health, child care, and other services for women. Since the set of actions that are most appropriate in a given situation will be context specific, we present examples of approaches that have worked in Sub-Saharan Africa." from TextNutrition ,Property rights ,Child care ,Education ,Women ,Gender ,

Impacts of agricultural research on poverty: findings of an integrated economic and social analysis

Agricultural research, Sustainable livelihoods, Agricultural growth, Gender, Agricultural technology,

The Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index

The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) is a new survey-based index designed to measure the empowerment, agency, and inclusion of women in the agricultural sector. The WEAI was initially developed as a tool to reflect women’s empowerment that may result from the United States government’s Feed the Future Initiative, which commissioned the development of the WEAI. The WEAI can also be used more generally to assess the state of empowerment and gender parity in agriculture, to identify key areas in which empowerment needs to be strengthened, and to track progress over time. The WEAI is an aggregate index, reported at the country or regional level, based on individual-level data collected by interviewing men and women within the same households. The WEAI comprises two subindexes. The first assesses the degree to which women are empowered in five domains of empowerment (5DE) in agriculture. It reflects the percentage of women who are empowered and, among those who are not, the percentage of domains in which women enjoy adequate achievements. These domains are (1) decisions about agricultural production, (2) access to and decision-making power about productive resources, (3) control of use of income, (4) leadership in the community, and (5) time allocation. The second subindex (the Gender Parity Index [GPI]) measures gender parity. The GPI reflects the percentage of women who are empowered or whose achievements are at least as high as the men in their households. For those households that have not achieved gender parity, the GPI shows the empowerment gap that needs to be closed for women to reach the same level of empowerment as men. This technical paper documents the development of the WEAI and presents pilot data from Bangladesh, Guatemala, and Uganda, so that researchers and practitioners seeking to use the index in their own work would understand how the survey questionnaires were developed and piloted, how the qualitative case studies were undertaken, how the index was constructed, how various indicators were validated, and how it can be used in other settings

Hunger, nutrition, and precipitation: evidence from Ghana and Bangladesh

Changing precipitation patterns caused by climate change are expected to have major impacts on food security and nutrition in agrarian areas in developing countries. However, the linkages between the duration and severity of precipitation shocks and their effects on child nutrition and household food security metrics remain underexplored. In this study, we used Feed the Future datasets from Ghana and Bangladesh to examine the impact of precipitation extremes on nutrition, measured by children’s height-for-age and weight-for-height Z-scores, and food security, measured by the Household Hunger Scale. We used a spatial error regression to control for the effects of spatial autocorrelation, and we found an association between precipitation shocks and household hunger in both Ghana and Bangladesh, as well as an association between higher rainfall and worse child nutrition in Ghana

Women’s tenure security on collective lands: A conceptual framework

Within discussions of land and resource rights, there is growing attention to women’s rights, mostly in terms of household and individual rights to private property. This leaves unanswered questions about whether and how women’s land rights can be secured under collective tenure, upon which billions of people worldwide depend. There is an important gap in conceptual tools, empirical understanding, and policy recommendations on women’s land rights within collective tenure. To address this gap and lay the foundations for a sound body of empirical studies and appropriate policies, we develop a conceptual framework to improve our understanding of women’s land rights under collective tenure. We begin by discussing what secure tenure for women on collective lands would entail. We then present the conceptual framework for what factors would affect women’s tenure security, building on a framework for land tenure security that focuses on individual and household tenure. We give attention to particularities of rangelands, forests, and other types of lands as well as commonalities across types of collective lands. A key theme that emerges is that for women to have secure tenure under collective tenure, two dimensions must be in place. First, the collective (group) itself must have tenure security. Second, women must have secure rights within this collective. The latter requires us to consider the governance structures, how men and women access and control land, and the extent to which women have voice and power within the collective. More consistent analyses of collective tenure systems using the framework presented in this paper can help to identify which action resources are important for groups to secure rights to collective lands, and for women to advocate for their rights within the group

Gender, Assets, and Agricultural Development Programs: A Conceptual Framework

Being able to access, control, and own productive assets such as land, labor, finance, and social capital enables people to create stable and productive lives. Yet relatively little is known about how agricultural development programs can most effectively deliver these outcomes of well-being, empowerment, and higher income in a way that acknowledges differential access to and control over assets by men and women. After reviewing the literature on gender and assets, this paper offers a conceptual framework for understanding the gendered pathways through which asset accumulation occurs, including attention to not only men's and women's assets but also those they share in joint control and ownership. Unlike previous frameworks, this model depicts the gendered dimensions of each component of the pathway in recognition of the evidence that men and women not only control, own, or dispose of assets in different ways, but also access, control, and own different kinds of assets. The framework generates gender-specific hypotheses that can be tested empirically: i) Different types of assets enable different livelihoods, with a greater stock and diversity of assets being associated with more diverse livelihoods and better well-being outcomes; ii) Men and women use different types of assets to cope with different types of shocks; iii) Interventions that increase men's and women's stock of a particular asset improve the bargaining power of the individual(s) who control that asset; and iv) Interventions and policies that reduce the gender gap in assets are better able to achieve development outcomes related to food security, health, and nutrition and other aspects of well-being related to agency and empowerment. The implications of these gender differences for designing agricultural development interventions to increase asset growth and returns to assets as well as for value chain development are discussed. Based on this analysis, additional gaps in knowledge and possible investigations to address them are identified