Tool

Women's Empowerment in Nutrition Index (WENI)

Women discuss food and nutrition during a meeting
Women discuss food and nutrition during a meeting of Sneha Shivir, a community based care and nutrition counselling initiative for mothers and care givers.
Giacomo Pirozzi/Panos Pictures

 WENI is a nutrition-centered metric of empowerment that can be used to measure, track and identify barriers to nutritional empowerment.

Why is the tool important?

Many existing measures of women’s empowerment were developed without nutritional outcomes in mind and therefore do not provide direct guidance on pathways for improving nutrition. WENI aims to measure women’s empowerment in the realm of nutrition. 

Who is the tool for?

This is a quantitative tool designed for researchers. 

Country of focus: India/South Asia.

How can I use the tool?

The supplementary material in the published academic paper includes a list of the indicators that make up the index. 

Download paper.

When and how was it developed?

The tool was developed in India, South Asia, in 2017. The team of researchers who developed the tool include:

  • Erin Lentz, University of Texas, Austin, USA
  • Sudha Narayanan, Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research, Mumbai, India
  • Marzia Fontana, Independent Researcher, UK
  • Collaborative Research and Dissemination, New Delhi, India
  • Bharati Kulkarni National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad, India
  • Sabarmatee, Independent Researcher, India
  • with Krushna Ranaware, Ankita Mondal, Udayan Rathore, Nirali Bakhla, and others
  • Civil society partners

Where can I get the tool? Who can I contact?

Download slides.

Download paper.

Publications

Report / Factsheet

Women’s Empowerment in Nutrition Index (WENI): Measuring nutritional empowerment to better link agriculture to nutrition

Lentz, E., Narayanan, S., Fontana, M., Sabarmatee, Ranaware, K., Mondal, A., Rathore, U., Bakhla, N., Collaborative Research and Dissemination, New Delhi, India, Bharati Kulkarni National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad, India. (2017). Women’s Empowerment in Nutrition Index (WENI):  Measuring nutritional empowerment to better link agriculture to nutrition.