Tapping Irrigation’s Potential for Women’s Empowerment: Findings from Ethiopia and Tanzania

Photo Credit Goes Here

Photo credit: 2006 Freweni Gebre Mariam/IFPRI

Claudia Ringler, October 13th, 2015, USAID

Tapping Irrigation’s Potential for Women’s

Empowerment: Findings from Ethiopia and Tanzania

U.S. GOVERNMENT PARTNERS

PRESENTATION

• Introduction to the project

• Background of the WEAI

• Findings from Ethiopia

• Findings from Tanzania

• Conclusions and next steps

ABOUT THE PROJECT• The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Small-

Scale Irrigation, a project of the U.S.

Government’s Feed the Future Initiative, is a five-

year project in Ethiopia, Ghana and Tanzania

aimed at benefiting the region’s farmers by

improving effective use of scarce water supplies

through interventions in small-scale irrigation

• Activities include field interventions with water

management technologies, capacity building,

research on irrigation-nutrition-gender linkages,

and provision of data and analysis of empirical

models of irrigation impacts (IDSS)

THE ILSSI SURVEY• IFPRI’s activities include collection of survey data

in all three countries, as well as analysis of

irrigation linkages with gender, nutrition and

health

• IFPRI is conducting household surveys in Ethiopia,

Tanzania and Ghana at the baseline and endline of

the ILSSI project

• Topics of the survey include:

– Crop & livestock inputs, production and practices

– Household and women’s dietary diversity

– Child health, diet, feeding and anthropometry

– Household shocks, assets, credit

– Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI)

Slide Credit: Feed the Future GIF Presentation

GENDER-IRRIGATION LINKAGES• Guided by the previous framework, there are several

pathways by which we hypothesize gender and

irrigation are linked:

– Improved maternal and child nutrition through increased diversity and quantity foods and/or increased household incomes

– Improved environmental conditions for better maternal and child health outcomes

– Improved income generation and decision-making power for women

• On the negative side, potentially:

– Malaria

– Pollution/contamination of water sources and environmental conditions

– See Domenech, 2015 paper in Global Food Security

Photo Source: IWMI, Ethiopia

THE WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT IN

AGRICULTURE INDEX

• The WEAI measures the

empowerment, agency and

inclusion of women in the

agriculture sector using the 5

domains of empowerment

(5DE) to the right and the

Gender Parity Index

• Both of these scores are

weighted and aggregated to

create the WEAI

• WEAI is on a scale from zero to

one, with higher values = greater

empowerment

ETHIOPIA SURVEY

• In Ethiopia, we surveyed 15 villages, including 4 ILSSI intervention villages

• 4 woredas surveyed include: Bahir Dar Zuria, Dangla, AdamiTulu and Lemu

• Data collection occurred from November 14th - December 26th

2014

• 439 households total

Sampled Villages in Ethiopia

TANZANIA SURVEY

• In Tanzania, we surveyed 14

villages in Kilosa and

Mvomero districts, 2 of which

were ILSSI intervention

villages

• Data collection occurred from

June 24th – July 11th, 2015

• 451 households total

Data Collection Sites in Tanzania

Household Survey Sample

Ethiopia Tanzania

No. Percent No. Percent

Non-irrigating

households185 42.14% 224 49.67%

Irrigating

households254 57.86% 227 50.33%

Total 439 451

Number of ILSSI

Intervention

Households

118 84

WEAI MODIFICATIONS

• Technically, we use a “Modified WEAI” for the ILSSI project in order

to better capture linkages between irrigation and gender

• Modifications to the original WEAI include:

– Role in decisionmaking: on irrigated food crop and cash crop farming

– Autonomy in decisionmaking: types of crops to grow for irrigated vs. non-irrigated

– Productive capital: also includes irrigation tank/pond and irrigation equipment

– Access to information/extension: on irrigation methods

– Time allocation: time spent irrigating/working with equipment

– Added response options on irrigation topics for various questions on credit, savings, group membership

WEAI RESULTS: COUNTRYWIDE,

TANZANIA AND ETHIOPIA

Women Men Women Men

Disempowered Headcount (H) 0.39 0.21 0.48 0.17

Average Inadequacy Score (A) 0.35 0.28 0.36 0.30

Disempowerment Index (M0) 0.14 0.06 0.17 0.05

5DE Index (1-M0) 0.86 0.94 0.83 0.95

No. of observations 312 247 398 384

% of Data used 79.39% 89.17% 92.77% 94.58%

% of women with no gender parity (HGPI) 0.30 0.46

Average Empowerment Gap (IGPI) 0.20 0.21

GPI 0.94 0.91

No. of women in dual households 131 396

% of Data Used 60.37% 88.89%

WEAI 0.87 0.83

IndexesTanzania Ethiopia

ETHIOPIA: BY IRRIGATION STATUS




5DE Index (1-M0) 0.81 0.95 0.85 0.94


% of Data used 90% 94% 96% 95%

% of women with no gender parity (HGPI) 50% 40%


GPI 0.90 0.91


% of Data Used 87% 91%

WEAI 0.82 0.85

Irrigators: Ethiopia

Women:

Irrigators

Men:

Irrigators

Women:

Non-

Men: Non-

irrigatorsIndexes

TANZANIA: BY IRRIGATION STATUS




5DE Index (1-M0) 0.88 0.94 0.85 0.94


% of Data used 77% 90% 82% 88%

% of women with no gender parity (HGPI) 25% 36%


GPI 0.96 0.92


% of Data Used 59% 62%

WEAI 0.88 0.86

Irrigators: Tanzania

Women:

Irrigators

Men:

Irrigators

Women:

Non-

Men: Non-

irrigatorsIndexes

ETHIOPIA & TANZANIA: CONTRIBUTORS

TO DISEMPOWERMENT AMONG WOMEN

0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25

Input into productive decisions

Autonomy in Production

Ownership of Assets

Purchase, sale, transfer of assets

Access to/decisions on credit

Control over use of income

Group member

Speaking in public

Leisure time

Workload

Ethiopia and Tanzania: Contributors to Disempowerment of Women

Tanzania Ethiopia

ETHIOPIA: CONSTRAINTS TO DISEMPOWERMENT

AMONG WOMEN IRRIGATORS/NON-IRRIGATORS

0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25



Ownership of Assets




Group member

Speaking in public

Leisure time

Workload

Ethiopia: Contributors to Disempowerment of Women

Non-Irrigators Irrigators

TANZANIA: CONSTRAINTS TO DISEMPOWERMENT

AMONG WOMEN IRRIGATORS/NON-IRRIGATORS

0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25



Ownership of Assets




Group member

Speaking in public

Leisure time

Workload

Tanzania: Contributors of Domains to Disempowerment of Women

Non-Irrigators Irrigators

DECISIONMAKING ON IRRIGATION IN ETHIOPIA

Women’s Responses: Ethiopia

How much input did you have in making decisions about…

How much input did you have in decisions on the use of income generated from…

Irrigated food crop farming

Irrigated cash crop farming



No Input 0% 2% 0% 1%

Input into very few decisions 14% 15% 13% 16%

Input into some decisions 52% 53% 51% 53%

Input into most decisions 23% 16% 23% 15%

Input into all decisions 11% 15% 13% 15%

Total 100% 100% 100% 100%

DECISIONMAKING ON IRRIGATION IN TANZANIA

Women’s Responses: Tanzania

How much input did you have in making decisions about…

How much input did you have in decisions on the use of income

generated from…





No input 0% 0% 1% 0%

Input into very few decisions 9% 11% 11% 14%

Input into some decisions 23% 31% 26% 30%

Input into most decisions 30% 24% 29% 23%

Input into all decisions 37% 34% 34% 34%

Total 100% 100% 100% 100%

HOUSEHOLD FOOD SECURITY IN

ETHIOPIANon-irrigators

n=185

Irrigators

n=284

p-value of two-sided

ttest

Mean Mean

Household food

insecurity access

scale, 0-27

5.78 4.04 0.000

Female dietary

diversity score:

number of categories

consumed

3.69 3.58 0.293

Household dietary

diversity: number of

food categories

consumed

5.69 6.06 0.002

HOUSEHOLD FOOD SECURITY IN TANZANIA

Non-irrigators

n=224

Irrigators

n=227

p-value of two-

sided ttest

Mean Mean

Household food

insecurity access

scale, 0-27

3.92 2.58 0.0004

Female dietary

diversity score:

number of

categories

consumed

3.71 4.20 0.0010

Household dietary

diversity: number

of food categories

consumed

4.88 5.63 0.0002

CONCLUSIONS AND NEXT STEPS

• The ILSSI study has provided a baseline we can use to observe change

across groups and over time

• Irrigation and gender may indeed be linked: however, whether this

relationship is beneficial or not remains inconclusive

• The relationship between irrigation and gender likely depends on a

multitude of factors, such as crop type, household structure, local extension

system biases, and existing intra-household decisionmaking structures that

are difficult to tease out with our sample size

NEXT STEPS• We will use individual empowerment scores to observe the relationship

between irrigation and empowerment

• We will conduct crop level analysis, to see whether empowerment has a

relationship with crop choice (fruits, vegetables, cash crops, cereals etc.)

• We will examine plot-level decision making by women, to see the extent to

which women play a role in decisions regarding irrigation

• We are currently preparing a paper on the relationship between irrigation and

maternal and child nutrition

• We plan to investigate these linkages further in our future research through

regression analysis using individual WEAI scores, and welcome your feedback

and suggestions for research directions

THANK YOU!

Tapping Irrigation’s Potential for Women’s Empowerment: Findings from Ethiopia and Tanzania

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