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 measuring women’s agency – both disorganized and partial – provide a fragmented understanding of the constraints women f...

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Main Authors:	Donald, Aletheia, Koolwal, Gayatri, Annan, Jeannie, Goldstein, Markus
Format:	Journal Article
Published:	Taylor and Francis 2021
Subjects:	GENDER HOUSEHOLDS SURVEY METHODS AGENCY EMPOWERMENT WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35282

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recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-352822021-04-23T14:02:19Z Measuring Women's Agency Donald, Aletheia Koolwal, Gayatri Annan, Jeannie Goldstein, Markus GENDER HOUSEHOLDS SURVEY METHODS AGENCY EMPOWERMENT WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT 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 measuring women’s agency – both disorganized and partial – provide a fragmented understanding of the constraints women face in exercising their agency, thus restricting the design of reliable and valid interventions and evaluation of their impact. This paper proposes a multidisciplinary framework for capturing individual agency, containing three critical dimensions: goal setting, perceived control and ability to initiate action toward goals (“sense of agency”), and acting on goals. For each dimension, the paper reviews existing measurement approaches and what is known about their relative quality. The study concludes by highlighting that future research to improve the measurement of women’s agency should prioritize incorporating different contexts, age groups, and decision-making areas to ensure programming and policies are meaningful to the lives of women. 2021-03-17T20:27:11Z 2021-03-17T20:27:11Z 2020-03 Journal Article Feminist Economics 1354-5701 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35282 CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Taylor and Francis Publications & Research :: Journal Article Publications & Research
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
topic	GENDER HOUSEHOLDS SURVEY METHODS AGENCY EMPOWERMENT WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT
spellingShingle	GENDER HOUSEHOLDS SURVEY METHODS AGENCY EMPOWERMENT WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT Donald, Aletheia Koolwal, Gayatri Annan, Jeannie Goldstein, Markus Measuring Women's Agency
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 measuring women’s agency – both disorganized and partial – provide a fragmented understanding of the constraints women face in exercising their agency, thus restricting the design of reliable and valid interventions and evaluation of their impact. This paper proposes a multidisciplinary framework for capturing individual agency, containing three critical dimensions: goal setting, perceived control and ability to initiate action toward goals (“sense of agency”), and acting on goals. For each dimension, the paper reviews existing measurement approaches and what is known about their relative quality. The study concludes by highlighting that future research to improve the measurement of women’s agency should prioritize incorporating different contexts, age groups, and decision-making areas to ensure programming and policies are meaningful to the lives of women.
format	Journal Article
author	Donald, Aletheia Koolwal, Gayatri Annan, Jeannie Goldstein, Markus
author_facet	Donald, Aletheia Koolwal, Gayatri Annan, Jeannie 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	Taylor and Francis
publishDate	2021
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35282
_version_	1764482708071776256

Measuring Women's Agency

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