Family Planning, Women's Empowerment, and Population and Societal Impacts Proceedings of a Workshop (2021) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
3 Measuring Women's Empowerment
3 Measuring Women's Empowerment
Pages 17-30
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 17... ...
(Ushma Upad hyay, University of California, San Francisco) • Key challenges in measuring empowerment include distinguish ing between social norms as attributes of communities versus attributes of individuals; distinguishing between collective and individual agency; distinguishing between empowerment vis à-vis family members and empowerment in relation to social institutions; and taking account of the fact that both empower ment and family planning are dynamic rather than static pro cesses.
|
From page 18... ...
Upadhyay pointed to a need to perform more p arieties of measurements in multiple contexts to interrogate how contexv tual changes influence individual power. Empowerment measures must capture a complex process, Upadhyay noted, one that includes bargaining, negotiating, and making choices in the face of resistance.
|
From page 19... ...
Finally, Upadhyay introduced a new resource for women's empowerment measures, the University of California Global Health Institute (UCGHI) Database of Gender and Women's Empowerment Measures.2 2 See http://www.empowermentmeasures.org.
|
From page 20... ...
requested advice on what actions researchers could take when social norms pose challenges to asking a particular survey question. Upadhyay advised that surveys avoid language that marginalizes some respondents.
|
From page 21... ...
Desai said that most literature to date focuses on individual-level agency or intra-family negotiations, partly due to the simple fact that relevant data exist, for example from demographic and health surveys. More recent e fforts to expand these measurements attempt to evaluate more dimensions of agency, such as self-efficacy and gender attitudes, and the linkages between social institutions and individual agency, such as through access to paid work, land ownership, and financial inclusion.
|
From page 22... ...
, but noted that some situations may call for measures of collective agency. Participation in self-help groups, community involvement in hiring health care workers, informal social networks for discussion of childbearing and contraception, and community- focused sex-education programs are all relevant measures of collective agency for family planning research.
|
From page 23... ...
Desai shared that three natural experiments occurred between two survey waves in India: first, the implementation of a job guarantee program that had a positive impact on women's LFP; second, the introduction of cash transfers for hospital deliveries, which also had a positive impact on women's LFP; and third, the introduction of transportation networks within a village, which led to women's participation in nonagricultural work. Birdsall added that another critical opportunity for a natural experiment would be to follow a policy change specifically related to contraception access, family planning, or general reproductive health.
|
From page 24... ...
agency. Rather than offering a comprehensive measure of women's overall SRH agency, these measures tend to focus on specific concepts, such as sexual activity, HIV risk, prevention of pregnancy using contraception, adolescent SRH, and agency in pregnancy.
|
From page 25... ...
Intrinsic agency includes state of mind, awareness of rights and aspirations, confidence in capabilities, and internal motivation to act. Instrumental agency includes acting strategically, exercising voice, influencing decisions, and moving freely in historically restricted spaces.
|
From page 26... ...
During the discussion, Yount added that in conducting a survey experi ent in Bangladesh, her team has found that responses are sensi m tive to changes in question wording and order and that it is important to bring rigor to the measurement of agency in this regard. Amy Tsui asked whether any panelist had experience measuring change in empowerment at the community level in a randomized experiment.
|
From page 27... ...
Measurement of this sense of control in cognitive science has employed brain imaging studies and sensory tests that capture different perceptions of self- and externally generated stimuli. The social sciences have historically conceptualized sense of agency according to a framework developed by Ellen Skinner in the 1990s, which characterizes the relationship between resources, or means, and goal-related outcomes, or ends.
|
From page 28... ...
" About 11 years ago, the DHS started to separately ask husbands and wives questions about household decision-making roles. Donald presented results from a study that analyzed these data from more than 71,000 couples across 23 sub-Saharan African countries, focusing on questions about decision-making roles for major household purchases.14 Consistent with previous public health research, the study showed that well-being outcomes, such as those concerning women's general and reproductive health, are often highest when spouses agree on the woman's power, yet nearly half of couples disagreed about roles and decision-making power.
|
From page 29... ...
Donald noted that advances in agency measurement will help sharpen theoretical insights on how households actually work, and lead to the design of better programs and policies that can more effectively target particular cognitive or behavioral pathways in enhancing women's empowerment. In the discussion, Anita Raj asked for examples of advancements in the measurement of self-efficacy and decision making.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.