Measuring Women's Agency
Improving women's agency, namely their ability to define goals and act on them, is crucial for advancing gender equality and the empowerment of women. Yet, existing frameworks for women's agency measurement -- both disorganized and partia...
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/333481500385677886/Measuring-womens-agency http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27955 |
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okr-10986-279552021-06-08T14:42:48Z Measuring Women's Agency Donald, Aletheia Koolwal, Gayatri Annan, Jeannie Falb, Kathryn Goldstein, Markus GENDER HOUSEHOLD SURVEYS MEASUREMENT ERROR GENDER EQUALITY EMPOWERMENT WOMEN'S AGENCY AFRICA GENDER POLICY GENDER INNOVATION LAB WOMEN AND SOCIAL NORMS Improving women's agency, namely their ability to define goals and act on them, is crucial for advancing gender equality and the empowerment of women. Yet, existing frameworks for women's agency measurement -- both disorganized and partial -- provide a fragmented understanding of the constraints women face in exercising their agency, restricting the design of quality interventions and evaluation of their impact. This paper proposes a multidisciplinary framework containing the three critical dimensions of agency: goal-setting, perceived control and ability ("sense of agency"), and acting on goals. For each dimension, the paper (i) reviews existing measurement approaches and what is known about their relative quality; (ii) presents new empirical evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa: validating vignettes as a measurement tool for goal-setting, examining gender and regional discrepancies in response to sense-of-agency measures, and investigating what information spousal disagreement over decision-making roles can provide about the intra-household process of acting on goals; and (iii) highlights priorities for future research to improve the measurement of women’s agency. 2017-08-24T19:53:00Z 2017-08-24T19:53:00Z 2017-07 Working Paper http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/333481500385677886/Measuring-womens-agency http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27955 English en_US Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8148 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Policy Research Working Paper Africa Sub-Saharan Africa |
| repository_type |
Digital Repository |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
Digital Repositories |
| building |
World Bank Open Knowledge Repository |
| collection |
World Bank |
| language |
English en_US |
| topic |
GENDER HOUSEHOLD SURVEYS MEASUREMENT ERROR GENDER EQUALITY EMPOWERMENT WOMEN'S AGENCY AFRICA GENDER POLICY GENDER INNOVATION LAB WOMEN AND SOCIAL NORMS |
| spellingShingle |
GENDER HOUSEHOLD SURVEYS MEASUREMENT ERROR GENDER EQUALITY EMPOWERMENT WOMEN'S AGENCY AFRICA GENDER POLICY GENDER INNOVATION LAB WOMEN AND SOCIAL NORMS Donald, Aletheia Koolwal, Gayatri Annan, Jeannie Falb, Kathryn Goldstein, Markus Measuring Women's Agency |
| geographic_facet |
Africa Sub-Saharan Africa |
| relation |
Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8148 |
| description |
Improving women's agency, namely
their ability to define goals and act on them, is crucial
for advancing gender equality and the empowerment of women.
Yet, existing frameworks for women's agency measurement
-- both disorganized and partial -- provide a fragmented
understanding of the constraints women face in exercising
their agency, restricting the design of quality
interventions and evaluation of their impact. This paper
proposes a multidisciplinary framework containing the three
critical dimensions of agency: goal-setting, perceived
control and ability ("sense of agency"), and
acting on goals. For each dimension, the paper (i) reviews
existing measurement approaches and what is known about
their relative quality; (ii) presents new empirical evidence
from Sub-Saharan Africa: validating vignettes as a
measurement tool for goal-setting, examining gender and
regional discrepancies in response to sense-of-agency
measures, and investigating what information spousal
disagreement over decision-making roles can provide about
the intra-household process of acting on goals; and (iii)
highlights priorities for future research to improve the
measurement of women’s agency. |
| format |
Working Paper |
| author |
Donald, Aletheia Koolwal, Gayatri Annan, Jeannie Falb, Kathryn Goldstein, Markus |
| author_facet |
Donald, Aletheia Koolwal, Gayatri Annan, Jeannie Falb, Kathryn Goldstein, Markus |
| author_sort |
Donald, Aletheia |
| title |
Measuring Women's Agency |
| title_short |
Measuring Women's Agency |
| title_full |
Measuring Women's Agency |
| title_fullStr |
Measuring Women's Agency |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Measuring Women's Agency |
| title_sort |
measuring women's agency |
| publisher |
World Bank, Washington, DC |
| publishDate |
2017 |
| url |
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/333481500385677886/Measuring-womens-agency http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27955 |
| _version_ |
1764466222574862336 |