Topic Guide: Women’s empowerment in a changing agricultural and rural context

Abstract

The aim of this Topic Guide is to provide readers with a better understanding of the elusive concept of ‘empowerment’ in agricultural and rural contexts. The Guide summarises and signposts readers to current debates and thinking around women’s empowerment, whilst being conscious that supporting empowerment has no definitive response. There are many ways to support or enable empowerment. The Guide is structured around 5 broad themes: Section 1 contains a summary of issues around gender. It begins with a glossary that unpacks gender related jargon and includes a helpful review of what is meant by ‘empowerment’. Section 2 broadly examines how to support the empowerment of rural women at the policy and programming level. Section 3 explores waged work options for women in rural areas and social protection initiatives. Section 4 focuses on empowerment issues related to entrepreneurship, particularly along agricultural value chains. Section 5 concerns monitoring, evaluating and assessing impact. This peer reviewed Topic Guide has been produced by Evidence on Demand with the assistance of the UK Department for International Development (DFID)