Download or read book What does empowerment mean to women in northern Ghana Insights from research around a small scale irrigation intervention written by Bryan, Elizabeth and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 51 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women’s empowerment is important to improve the status of women and achieve greater gender equity. It is also an important vehicle for achieving other development goals related to food security, nutrition, health, and economic growth. Increasingly, researchers seek ways to measure women’s empowerment, trace the pathways through which women’s empowerment is achieved, and provide guidance for policymakers and practitioners aiming to facilitate women’s empowerment through their interventions. This paper explores local perceptions of empowerment in the Upper East Region of Ghana in the context of a small-scale irrigation intervention targeted to men and women farmers. Using data collected through qualitative interviews and focus groups, the paper traces the linkages between small-scale irrigation and aspects of women’s empowerment, identified as important to men and women farmers themselves. The relationship between the components of empowerment and small-scale irrigation are placed within a larger context of social change underlying these relationships. Finally, this paper explores the ways that the introduction of modern technologies for small-scale irrigation may contribute to women’s empowerment.

Download or read book What Does Empowerment Mean to Women in Northern Ghana written by Elizabeth Bryan and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Women s empowerment for sustainable rural livelihoods written by Akua Opokua Britwum and published by kassel university press GmbH. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Agricultural interventions are designed on certain assumptions of empowerment that do not necessarily address the livelihood constraints of the rural women they set out to support. This is a failing that might be due to the omission of women’s voices expressing their understanding of empowerment and its relation to existing gender orders. Using primary data from the Upper East and Northern Regions in Ghana, we explored women and men’s notions of the processes and outcomes of empowerment. We began by understanding the basis of women’s disempowerment and confirmed its location within agricultural production relations that granted women limited access to resources. Respondents recognised all the main dimensions of power: within, with, to and over. The restrictions of women’s empowerment to the provisioning role on condition that it did not usurp male power over women limited intervention’s ability to provide true empowerment for women. But signs of increasing transfer of women’s power within into group action and male acceptance of women’s expanding spheres of influence indicate that some grounds for true transformation in the future exists.

Download or read book Women s empowerment and child nutrition in polygynous households of Northern Ghana written by Bourdier, Tomoé and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2019-03-01 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Weather shocks and other shocks affecting the economy of farm households often trigger a cascade of coping mechanisms, from reducing food consumption to selling assets, with potentially lasting consequences on child development. In polygynous households (in which a man is married to several women), the factors that may aggravate or mitigate the impacts of such adverse events are still poorly understood. In particular, little is known about the complex mechanisms through which women’s empowerment may affect the allocation of household resources in the presence of more than one female decision-maker. Where polygyny is associated with discriminatory social norms, co-wives may have limited bargaining power, which may translate into poorer outcomes for their children. While competition between co-wives may generate inefficiencies in the allocation of household resources, cooperation in the domains of agricultural production or domestic labor may lead to economies of scale and facilitate informal risk sharing. The rank of each co-wife may also have a strong influence on the welfare of her own children, relative to other children. Using the Feed the Future Ghana Population Survey data, I investigate the relationship between polygyny and children’s nutrition, and how it may be mediated through women’s bargaining power. Using the age of each co-wife as a proxy for rank, I also study how the senior-wife status of a mother may influence her children’s nutrition outcomes.

Download or read book Empowering Women in Northern Ghana Through Maternal and Child Health Information written by Mohammed Rahana and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This poster is about empowering expectant women and new mothers in rural areas of northern Ghana by providing them with timely, targeted and action-oriented health information. Through the Technology for Maternal and Child Health (T4MCH) project more than 8,000 women have received weekly voice messages in their local language addressing maternal and child health (MCH) issues and partner/family support. The messages were developed in collaboration with Ghana Health Service (GHS), based on the needs of women in project location. More than 94,000 messages were delivered in the period between July 2017 and September 2018, with each woman receiving an average of 13 messages. The messaging service is combined with training and support for GHS workers in the use of ICT tools, to improve services and knowledge sharing with women and men at health facilities and in communities. To assess effectiveness and empowerment among women who received messages, T4MCH project officers (three women and one man, with support from GHS and other project staff) conducted 300 interviews involving 31 health facilities in September 2018. Women interviewed almost universally found that the information was very useful (100%), led to changes in their activities and belief systems (99%), and that they would recommend the service to others (96%). 74% of the women interviewed also felt that the messages had encouraged their partners and families to support them throughout their pregnancy u2013 assisting in household chores, providing nutritious food for the family and providing financial assistance. The empowering influence of the messages was clearly evident in the specific comments made during interviews, for example, u201cI live alone with my husband in a new communityu2026 the weekly messages I receive serve as my source of information on best ways to care for myself and I have delivered my baby without complicationsu201d. The project has thus empowered more than 8000 women and their partners to make healthy decisions for themselves and their families. Reference: T4MCH Mid-Year Monitoring Report to Global Affairs Canada, November 2018, SALASAN Consulting and Savana Signatures (not published).

Download or read book Negotiating Gender Equality for Women s Empowerment written by Fatima Nabia Adam Bassit and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ghana maintains strong constitutional advocacy for the equal rights of all its citizens, irrespective of gender or sociocultural orientation. Nonetheless, women in selected communities in Tamale, located in the Northern Region of Ghana, face various forms of discrimination that have proven to be strong barriers to their upward social mobility. This study builds on previous research studies, such as one conducted by UNICEF (2010), that suggest many young women in Africa engage in domestic work at the expense of their education. The scope of this paper includes an exploration of how women in the selected communities negotiate gender and educational equality and the resulting consequences on their personal lives. It also looks at how the women in this area navigate various challenges at home, in school, and in their communities, as well as the roles their parents and community leaders play in this journey. The purpose of this study is to learn from women's experiences and identify mechanisms that may be used to address impediments to gender equality at the intersection of women's education, empowerment, and economic development. Through focus-group discussions, one-on-one interviews, and participant-observation, findings suggest that women are not only resourceful and self-reliant, but they are equally desirous to improve their life skills and livelihood given the right opportunity. The study recommends concerted efforts from both government and nongovernmental organizations directed at eliminating the challenges/barriers to empowering women in the communities identified.

Download or read book Women s Empowerment and Child Nutrition in Polygynous Households of Northern Ghana written by Bourdier Tomoé and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Weather shocks and other shocks affecting the economy of farm households often trigger a cascade of coping mechanisms, from reducing food consumption to selling assets, with potentially lasting consequences on child development. In polygynous households (in which a man is married to several women), the factors that may aggravate or mitigate the impacts of such adverse events are still poorly understood. In particular, little is known about the complex mechanisms through which women's empowerment may affect the allocation of household resources in the presence of more than one female decision-maker. Where polygyny is associated with discriminatory social norms, co-wives may have limited bargaining power, which may translate into poorer outcomes for their children. While competition between co-wives may generate inefficiencies in the allocation of household resources, cooperation in the domains of agricultural production or domestic labor may lead to economies of scale and facilitate informal risk sharing. The rank of each co-wife may also have a strong influence on the welfare of her own children, relative to other children. Using the Feed the Future Ghana Population Survey data, I investigate the relationship between polygyny and children's nutrition, and how it may be mediated through women's bargaining power. Using the age of each co-wife as a proxy for rank, I also study how the senior-wife status of a mother may influence her children's nutrition outcomes.

Download or read book Women s Empowerment and Child Nutritionin written by Tomoé Bourdier and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Voice and Agency written by Jeni Klugman and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2014-09-29 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite recent advances in important aspects of the lives of girls and women, pervasive challenges remain. These challenges reflect widespread deprivations and constraints and include epidemic levels of gender-based violence and discriminatory laws and norms that prevent women from owning property, being educated, and making meaningful decisions about their own lives--such as whether and when to marry or have children. These often violate their most basic rights and are magnified and multiplied by poverty and lack of education. This groundbreaking book distills vast data and hundreds of studies to shed new light on deprivations and constraints facing the voice and agency of women and girls worldwide, and on the associated costs for individuals, families, communities, and global development. The volume presents major new findings about the patterns of constraints and overlapping deprivations and focuses on several areas key to women s empowerment: freedom from violence, sexual and reproductive health and rights, ownership of land and housing, and voice and collective action. It highlights promising reforms and interventions from around the world and lays out an urgent agenda for governments, civil society, development agencies, and other stakeholders, including a call for greater investment in data and knowledge to benchmark progress.

Download or read book Ghanaian Voices written by Colleen Fulp and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 73 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The field of Gender and Development (GAD) has been debating women's empowerment programs for several decades; specifically, are these programs effective, culturally appropriate, sustainable? Global Mamas (GM), an NGO in Ghana, aims to achieve women's empowerment and financial independence by giving small business owners in the textile industry of batik and sewing access to increased income generation or employment opportunities. In June 2012 I traveled to Ghana to investigate how seamstresses and batikers working with Global Mamas experience empowerment, specifically autonomous decision-making and financial independence, and secondly, how effectively the two different types of employment models within Global Mamas programs meet the organization's mission of empowering women. Goals of this project were twofold. First, to elaborate how the term `empowerment' is operationalized in the literature and meaningfully understood in practice and in the field, as academics have not yet agreed on a definition of the term. To do so I drew upon previous work by scholars and practitioners and framed a definition of empowerment with clear empirical counterparts: autonomous decision-making and financial independence. Second, to unpack the causal mechanism between business ownership and empowerment, as defined by drawing on wider literature. Much of the scholarly work and practical programs assume that ownership leads to empowerment, few have questioned this causal direction, but it is not without question that it is possible there is a selectivity bias amongst those who might take the initiative to become `owners.' That is these program participants are already empowered to some extent. This possibility is rarely included in studies and my research design specifically sought to ensure that the full range of causal directions was allowed for. Twenty qualitative, one-on-one, open-ended interviews were conducted, transcribed, and entered into ATLAS.ti. Individuals represented two types of people: business owners that contract with GM and women that are employed directly with GM through the two different business models of Global Mamas and represent all spectrums of age, education level, work experience level, marital status, and time working with Global Mamas demographics. Three rounds of inductive coding were conducted utilizing ATLAS.ti software. To separate analyses were designed based on the data, the first examined data on the two empirical counterparts of empowerment: autonomous decision -making and financial independence and the second compared the two business models within Global Mamas. I found that owning a small business in Ghana does not lead to empowerment, rather, empowered women decide to open small businesses. In analysis 1, this is exposed through the data in both empirical counterparts of my empowerment definition: autonomous decision-making and financial independence. The first counterpart demonstrated strong data on the goal setting and decision-making capability of the women interviewed in this study, specifically on the ways that women autonomously plan for their businesses, make choices about how and when to work, as well as the ways they set and achieve personal, family and career based goals. The second counterpart, financial independence, is demonstrated in the way that women keep their own bank accounts separate from husbands or family members, choose when and how much to spend or put money into savings. The data on financial choices that women make for their businesses is extremely robust, with nearly all decisions being made independently, despite marital status, education level, or time spent working with Global Mamas. In analysis 2 regarding the NGO Global Mamas, my findings show data that compares the two business models. Business model 1, contracting directly with women business owners, allows women to greatly increase their income thus allowing women the capital to begin a savings account and work toward personal, family and career goals. These women also report happiness at their success with the NGO and plan to utilize their savings to further grow their businesses independently in the future. The women in this business model treat the NGO as a tool to reach their professional goals. However, women in business model 2 have not experienced an increase in wealth generation to date, which is reported as a negative effect of their work with the NGO. They do not see many alternate options for income generation in their area, which has led them to becoming employees of Global Mamas, but the high majority of women stated that they would prefer to be part of business model 1 or working in their own shops. One benefit the women do list from business model 2 is that they receive trade training on site, which will allow them to produce higher quality products in their personal businesses in the future. Global Mamas ought to continue to contract with women small business owners, but should also expand this opportunity to women in the regions where they currently only offer business model 2. If women were able to self select into the business model that best fits their needs, whether flexibility and possibility for increased income (business model 1) or stable income and trade training (business model 2), this NGO would be better achieving their mission of empowering women. As it stands now, Global Mamas is rather offering employment than empowerment activities in the regions where they exclusively offer business model 2. If this is the direction the NGO wishes to continue, it would be best to rework their marketing, recognizing the pre-existing empowered decision making status of women in Ghana in the productive work sector and framing their work as employment rather than empowerment. This could be achieved through more rigorous monitoring and evaluation. However, if a re-focus back to women's empowerment programs is the priority of the NGO, this could be achieved by implementing a GAD feminist theoretical model to assess their impact as well as outcomes of business model 2 and design new ways of framing their work.

Download or read book Three Essays on Women s Empowerment written by Phanwin Yokying and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of three essays that examine fundamental development challenges affecting women's and men's livelihoods in Ghana and Thailand. The first essay of this dissertation studies the effects of joint and individual land rights on men's and women's voice, or their ability to influence the use of agricultural earnings. It also investigates how men's voice and women's voice impact per capita consumption of market-produced, homegrown, and total food. Using the 2012 Feed the Future Baseline Survey from Ghana, this paper focuses on a sub-sample of married male and female farmers living in the Upper West, Upper East, Brong Ahafo, and Northern Regions of Ghana. The regression results indicate that land ownership, especially individual land rights, empowers both men and women by strengthening their ability to influence the use of agricultural earnings. Stronger influence over how agricultural earnings are used, in turn, enables both men and women to leverage the resources available to provide for household food security; per capita consumption of homegrown and total food raises when men and women have greater voice. These findings underline the importance of improving access to and ownership of land to economically and socially empower male and female farmers and to help address the chronic issue of food insecurity in Ghana. The second essay investigates how time in domestic and care work and in income-generating work activities is correlated with women's and men's abilities to become active members of economic and social groups. These groups include producers' and resource users' groups; religious groups; civic groups; and credit and savings groups. Using the 2012 Feed the Future Population Based Survey from Ghana, this paper focuses on a sub-sample of married women and men living in dual-adult households. The regression results indicate that women's time in domestic and care tasks is negatively correlated with the probability of becoming active group members in producers' and resource users' groups, civic groups, and religious groups. In contrast, the amount of time men spend in domestic and care work is not correlated with their group membership. While women's time in income-generating activities has no influence on their membership in producers' and resource users' and civic groups, their active membership in religious groups along with credit and savings groups complements their time in income-generating work. Men's time in income-generating activities increases their participation in these economic and social groups, especially in producers' and resource users' groups. Combining domestic and care work with income-generating work time, an increase in women's total workload decreases their membership in producers' and resource users' groups, civic groups, and religious groups and increases their participation in credit and savings groups. Men's total workload, on the other hand, increases their participation in producers' and resource users' groups, civic groups, along with credit and savings groups. These results point to the importance of accommodating women's work responsibilities as a strategy to increase women's opportunities to receive development services delivered through community-based groups. The third essay examines the relationships between children's time in work activities and the labor supply of their parents in the context of Thailand. Market work as well as domestic and care tasks are the two types of children's work activities considered in this analysis. The empirical analysis is based on the 2009 Labor Force and Time Use Surveys. The results indicate that children's time in market work is a complement to parents' labor supply. The complementary relationships are more pronounced between mothers' and older girls' labor supply and between fathers' and older boys' time in market activities, providing support for gender segregation in the relationships between parents' and older children's labor supply. In terms of domestic and care tasks, the regression estimates show that changes in parents' labor supply do not have significant influence on children's time in domestic and care tasks, particularly among girls, but boys' time in domestic and care tasks is found to be a weak substitute for parents' labor supply. The findings suggest that anti-poverty or expansionary policies that aim to increase adult labor force participation can have a spillover effect on children by increasing the need for older children to be involved in market work activities.

Download or read book Development of the project level Women s Empowerment in Agriculture Index pro WEAI written by Malapit, Hazel J. and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2019-01-18 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this paper, the authors describe the adaptation and validation of a project-level WEAI (or pro-WEAI) that agricultural development projects can use to identify key areas of women’s (and men’s) disempowerment, design appropriate strategies to address identified deficiencies, and monitor project outcomes related to women’s empowerment. The 12 pro-WEAI indicators are mapped to three domains: intrinsic agency (power within), instrumental agency (power to), and collective agency (power with). A gender parity index compares the empowerment scores of men and women in the same household. The authors describe the development of pro-WEAI, including: (1) pro-WEAI’s distinctiveness from other versions of the WEAI; (2) the process of piloting pro-WEAI in 13 agricultural development projects during the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, phase 2 (GAAP2); (3) analysis of quantitative data from the GAAP2 projects, including intrahousehold patterns of empowerment; and (4) a summary of the findings from the qualitative work exploring concepts of women’s empowerment in the project sites. The paper concludes with a discussion of lessons learned from pro-WEAI and possibilities for further development of empowerment metrics.

Download or read book Women s Economic Empowerment written by Kate Grantham and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-04 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the barriers to women’s economic empowerment in the Global South. Drawing on evidence from a wide range of countries, the book outlines important lessons and practical solutions for promoting gender equality. Despite global progress in closing gender gaps in education and health, women’s economic empowerment has lagged behind, with little evidence that economic growth promotes gender equality. International Development Research Centre’s (IDRC) Growth and Economic Opportunities for Women (GrOW) programme was set up to provide policy lessons, insights, and concrete solutions that could lead to advances in gender equality, particularly on the role of institutions and macroeconomic growth, barriers to labour market access for women, and the impact of women’s care responsibilities. This book showcases rigorous and multi-disciplinary research emerging from this ground-breaking programme, covering topics such as the school-to-work transition, child marriage, unpaid domestic work and childcare, labour market segregation, and the power of social and cultural norms that prevent women from fully participating in better paid sectors of the economy. With a range of rich case studies from Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Nepal, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, and Uganda, this book is perfect for students, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers working on women’s economic empowerment and gender equality in the Global South.

Download or read book Discussing Women s Empowerment written by Naila Kabeer and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Women s Empowerment and Nutrition written by Mara van den Bold and published by Intl Food Policy Res Inst. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many development programs that aim to alleviate poverty and improve investments in human capital consider women’s empowerment a key pathway by which to achieve impact and often target women as their main beneficiaries. Despite this, women’s empowerment dimensions are often not rigorously measured and are at times merely assumed. This paper starts by reflecting on the concept and measurement of women’s empowerment and then reviews some of the structural interventions that aim to influence underlying gender norms in society and eradicate gender discrimination. It then proceeds to review the evidence of the impact of three types of interventions—cash transfer programs, agricultural interventions, and microfinance programs—on women’s empowerment, nutrition, or both. Qualitative evidence on conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs generally points to positive impacts on women’s empowerment, although quantitative research findings are more heterogenous. CCT programs produce mixed results on long-term nutritional status, and very limited evidence exists of their impacts on micronutrient status. The little evidence available on unconditional cash transters (UCT) indicates mixed impacts on women’s empowerment and positive impacts on nutrition; however, recent reviews comparing CCT and UCT programs have found little difference in terms of their effects on stunting and they have found that conditionality is less important than other factors, such as access to healthcare and child age and sex. Evidence of cash transfer program impacts depending on the gender of the transfer recipient or on the conditionality is also mixed, although CCTs with non-health conditionalities seem to have negative impacts on nutritional status. The impacts of programs based on the gender of the transfer recipient show mixed results, but almost no experimental evidence exists of testing gender-differentiated impacts of a single program. Agricultural interventions—specifically home gardening and dairy projects—show mixed impacts on women’s empowerment measures such as time, workload, and control over income; but they demonstrate very little impact on nutrition. Implementation modalities are shown to determine differential impacts in terms of empowerment and nutrition outcomes. With regard to the impact of microfinance on women’s empowerment, evidence is also mixed, although more recent reviews do not find any impact on women’s empowerment. The impact of microfinance on nutritional status is mixed, with no evidence of impact on micronutrient status. Across all three types of programs (cash transfer programs, agricultural interventions, and microfinance programs), very little evidence exists on pathways of impact, and evidence is often biased toward a particular region. The paper ends with a discussion of the findings and remaining evidence gaps and an outline of recommendations for research.

Download or read book Tracking Progress on Child and Maternal Nutrition written by and published by UNICEF. This book was released on 2009 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report offers a rationale for urgently scaling up effective interventions to reduce the global burden of child and maternal undernutrition. It provides information on nutrition strategies and progress made by programmes, based on the most recent data available. The success stories and lessons leaned that are described in the publication demonstrate that reducing undernutrition is entirely feasible. The report presents detailed, up-to-date information on nutritional status, programme implementation and related indicators for the 24 countries where 80 per cent of the world’s stunted children live. While this report is a call to action for these 24 high-burden countries, it also highlights the need for accelerated efforts to reduce undernutrition in all countries.

Download or read book Women s Empowerment for a Sustainable Future written by Claude-Hélène Mayer and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-07-08 with total page 754 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume focuses on women’s empowerment for a sustainable future. It takes cultural and transcultural and positive psychology perspectives into consideration and explores the topic of women’s empowerment from diverse stances, across social strata, cultural divides as well as economic and political divisions. It addresses the critique of the overly Western focus of positive psychology on this topic by adopting a transnational and transcultural lens, and by taking non-WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) samples into in-depth consideration. The chapters therefore focus on women from diverse socio-cultural, political, socio-economic backgrounds and discuss their ways of empowering others and being empowered. They also discuss related positive psychology constructs, such as: coping, resilience, transformation, growth, leadership, creativity, identity development, sustainable action, as well as positive socio-economic, political and eco-sustainable thought and action. The volume as a whole looks at women's leadership as a factor of empowerment. A further fundamental assumption is that women’s empowerment is needed to create a sustainable future at micro-, meso- and macro levels, which presumes safety, peace, ecological considerations, and compassionate leadership.