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Author: Bryan, Elizabeth
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 51
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Book Description
Women’s empowerment is important to improve the status of women and achieve greater gender equity. It is also an important vehicle for achieving other development goals related to food security, nutrition, health, and economic growth. Increasingly, researchers seek ways to measure women’s empowerment, trace the pathways through which women’s empowerment is achieved, and provide guidance for policymakers and practitioners aiming to facilitate women’s empowerment through their interventions. This paper explores local perceptions of empowerment in the Upper East Region of Ghana in the context of a small-scale irrigation intervention targeted to men and women farmers. Using data collected through qualitative interviews and focus groups, the paper traces the linkages between small-scale irrigation and aspects of women’s empowerment, identified as important to men and women farmers themselves. The relationship between the components of empowerment and small-scale irrigation are placed within a larger context of social change underlying these relationships. Finally, this paper explores the ways that the introduction of modern technologies for small-scale irrigation may contribute to women’s empowerment.
Author: Bryan, Elizabeth
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 51
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Book Description
Women’s empowerment is important to improve the status of women and achieve greater gender equity. It is also an important vehicle for achieving other development goals related to food security, nutrition, health, and economic growth. Increasingly, researchers seek ways to measure women’s empowerment, trace the pathways through which women’s empowerment is achieved, and provide guidance for policymakers and practitioners aiming to facilitate women’s empowerment through their interventions. This paper explores local perceptions of empowerment in the Upper East Region of Ghana in the context of a small-scale irrigation intervention targeted to men and women farmers. Using data collected through qualitative interviews and focus groups, the paper traces the linkages between small-scale irrigation and aspects of women’s empowerment, identified as important to men and women farmers themselves. The relationship between the components of empowerment and small-scale irrigation are placed within a larger context of social change underlying these relationships. Finally, this paper explores the ways that the introduction of modern technologies for small-scale irrigation may contribute to women’s empowerment.
Author: Elizabeth Bryan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Author: Akua Opokua Britwum
Publisher: kassel university press GmbH
ISBN: 3737606307
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 40
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Book Description
Agricultural interventions are designed on certain assumptions of empowerment that do not necessarily address the livelihood constraints of the rural women they set out to support. This is a failing that might be due to the omission of women’s voices expressing their understanding of empowerment and its relation to existing gender orders. Using primary data from the Upper East and Northern Regions in Ghana, we explored women and men’s notions of the processes and outcomes of empowerment. We began by understanding the basis of women’s disempowerment and confirmed its location within agricultural production relations that granted women limited access to resources. Respondents recognised all the main dimensions of power: within, with, to and over. The restrictions of women’s empowerment to the provisioning role on condition that it did not usurp male power over women limited intervention’s ability to provide true empowerment for women. But signs of increasing transfer of women’s power within into group action and male acceptance of women’s expanding spheres of influence indicate that some grounds for true transformation in the future exists.
Author: Bourdier, Tomoé
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 44
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Book Description
Weather shocks and other shocks affecting the economy of farm households often trigger a cascade of coping mechanisms, from reducing food consumption to selling assets, with potentially lasting consequences on child development. In polygynous households (in which a man is married to several women), the factors that may aggravate or mitigate the impacts of such adverse events are still poorly understood. In particular, little is known about the complex mechanisms through which women’s empowerment may affect the allocation of household resources in the presence of more than one female decision-maker. Where polygyny is associated with discriminatory social norms, co-wives may have limited bargaining power, which may translate into poorer outcomes for their children. While competition between co-wives may generate inefficiencies in the allocation of household resources, cooperation in the domains of agricultural production or domestic labor may lead to economies of scale and facilitate informal risk sharing. The rank of each co-wife may also have a strong influence on the welfare of her own children, relative to other children. Using the Feed the Future Ghana Population Survey data, I investigate the relationship between polygyny and children’s nutrition, and how it may be mediated through women’s bargaining power. Using the age of each co-wife as a proxy for rank, I also study how the senior-wife status of a mother may influence her children’s nutrition outcomes.
Author: Mohammed Rahana
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
This poster is about empowering expectant women and new mothers in rural areas of northern Ghana by providing them with timely, targeted and action-oriented health information. Through the Technology for Maternal and Child Health (T4MCH) project more than 8,000 women have received weekly voice messages in their local language addressing maternal and child health (MCH) issues and partner/family support. The messages were developed in collaboration with Ghana Health Service (GHS), based on the needs of women in project location. More than 94,000 messages were delivered in the period between July 2017 and September 2018, with each woman receiving an average of 13 messages. The messaging service is combined with training and support for GHS workers in the use of ICT tools, to improve services and knowledge sharing with women and men at health facilities and in communities. To assess effectiveness and empowerment among women who received messages, T4MCH project officers (three women and one man, with support from GHS and other project staff) conducted 300 interviews involving 31 health facilities in September 2018. Women interviewed almost universally found that the information was very useful (100%), led to changes in their activities and belief systems (99%), and that they would recommend the service to others (96%). 74% of the women interviewed also felt that the messages had encouraged their partners and families to support them throughout their pregnancy u2013 assisting in household chores, providing nutritious food for the family and providing financial assistance. The empowering influence of the messages was clearly evident in the specific comments made during interviews, for example, u201cI live alone with my husband in a new communityu2026 the weekly messages I receive serve as my source of information on best ways to care for myself and I have delivered my baby without complicationsu201d. The project has thus empowered more than 8000 women and their partners to make healthy decisions for themselves and their families. Reference: T4MCH Mid-Year Monitoring Report to Global Affairs Canada, November 2018, SALASAN Consulting and Savana Signatures (not published).
Author: Fatima Nabia Adam Bassit
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Educational leadership
Languages : en
Pages : 328
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Book Description
Ghana maintains strong constitutional advocacy for the equal rights of all its citizens, irrespective of gender or sociocultural orientation. Nonetheless, women in selected communities in Tamale, located in the Northern Region of Ghana, face various forms of discrimination that have proven to be strong barriers to their upward social mobility. This study builds on previous research studies, such as one conducted by UNICEF (2010), that suggest many young women in Africa engage in domestic work at the expense of their education. The scope of this paper includes an exploration of how women in the selected communities negotiate gender and educational equality and the resulting consequences on their personal lives. It also looks at how the women in this area navigate various challenges at home, in school, and in their communities, as well as the roles their parents and community leaders play in this journey. The purpose of this study is to learn from women's experiences and identify mechanisms that may be used to address impediments to gender equality at the intersection of women's education, empowerment, and economic development. Through focus-group discussions, one-on-one interviews, and participant-observation, findings suggest that women are not only resourceful and self-reliant, but they are equally desirous to improve their life skills and livelihood given the right opportunity. The study recommends concerted efforts from both government and nongovernmental organizations directed at eliminating the challenges/barriers to empowering women in the communities identified.
Author: Bourdier Tomoé
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 44
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Book Description
Weather shocks and other shocks affecting the economy of farm households often trigger a cascade of coping mechanisms, from reducing food consumption to selling assets, with potentially lasting consequences on child development. In polygynous households (in which a man is married to several women), the factors that may aggravate or mitigate the impacts of such adverse events are still poorly understood. In particular, little is known about the complex mechanisms through which women's empowerment may affect the allocation of household resources in the presence of more than one female decision-maker. Where polygyny is associated with discriminatory social norms, co-wives may have limited bargaining power, which may translate into poorer outcomes for their children. While competition between co-wives may generate inefficiencies in the allocation of household resources, cooperation in the domains of agricultural production or domestic labor may lead to economies of scale and facilitate informal risk sharing. The rank of each co-wife may also have a strong influence on the welfare of her own children, relative to other children. Using the Feed the Future Ghana Population Survey data, I investigate the relationship between polygyny and children's nutrition, and how it may be mediated through women's bargaining power. Using the age of each co-wife as a proxy for rank, I also study how the senior-wife status of a mother may influence her children's nutrition outcomes.
Author: Tomoé Bourdier
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Author: Jeni Klugman
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464803609
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 239
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Book Description
Despite recent advances in important aspects of the lives of girls and women, pervasive challenges remain. These challenges reflect widespread deprivations and constraints and include epidemic levels of gender-based violence and discriminatory laws and norms that prevent women from owning property, being educated, and making meaningful decisions about their own lives--such as whether and when to marry or have children. These often violate their most basic rights and are magnified and multiplied by poverty and lack of education. This groundbreaking book distills vast data and hundreds of studies to shed new light on deprivations and constraints facing the voice and agency of women and girls worldwide, and on the associated costs for individuals, families, communities, and global development. The volume presents major new findings about the patterns of constraints and overlapping deprivations and focuses on several areas key to women s empowerment: freedom from violence, sexual and reproductive health and rights, ownership of land and housing, and voice and collective action. It highlights promising reforms and interventions from around the world and lays out an urgent agenda for governments, civil society, development agencies, and other stakeholders, including a call for greater investment in data and knowledge to benchmark progress.
Author: Colleen Fulp
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 73
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Book Description
The field of Gender and Development (GAD) has been debating women's empowerment programs for several decades; specifically, are these programs effective, culturally appropriate, sustainable? Global Mamas (GM), an NGO in Ghana, aims to achieve women's empowerment and financial independence by giving small business owners in the textile industry of batik and sewing access to increased income generation or employment opportunities. In June 2012 I traveled to Ghana to investigate how seamstresses and batikers working with Global Mamas experience empowerment, specifically autonomous decision-making and financial independence, and secondly, how effectively the two different types of employment models within Global Mamas programs meet the organization's mission of empowering women. Goals of this project were twofold. First, to elaborate how the term `empowerment' is operationalized in the literature and meaningfully understood in practice and in the field, as academics have not yet agreed on a definition of the term. To do so I drew upon previous work by scholars and practitioners and framed a definition of empowerment with clear empirical counterparts: autonomous decision-making and financial independence. Second, to unpack the causal mechanism between business ownership and empowerment, as defined by drawing on wider literature. Much of the scholarly work and practical programs assume that ownership leads to empowerment, few have questioned this causal direction, but it is not without question that it is possible there is a selectivity bias amongst those who might take the initiative to become `owners.' That is these program participants are already empowered to some extent. This possibility is rarely included in studies and my research design specifically sought to ensure that the full range of causal directions was allowed for. Twenty qualitative, one-on-one, open-ended interviews were conducted, transcribed, and entered into ATLAS.ti. Individuals represented two types of people: business owners that contract with GM and women that are employed directly with GM through the two different business models of Global Mamas and represent all spectrums of age, education level, work experience level, marital status, and time working with Global Mamas demographics. Three rounds of inductive coding were conducted utilizing ATLAS.ti software. To separate analyses were designed based on the data, the first examined data on the two empirical counterparts of empowerment: autonomous decision -making and financial independence and the second compared the two business models within Global Mamas. I found that owning a small business in Ghana does not lead to empowerment, rather, empowered women decide to open small businesses. In analysis 1, this is exposed through the data in both empirical counterparts of my empowerment definition: autonomous decision-making and financial independence. The first counterpart demonstrated strong data on the goal setting and decision-making capability of the women interviewed in this study, specifically on the ways that women autonomously plan for their businesses, make choices about how and when to work, as well as the ways they set and achieve personal, family and career based goals. The second counterpart, financial independence, is demonstrated in the way that women keep their own bank accounts separate from husbands or family members, choose when and how much to spend or put money into savings. The data on financial choices that women make for their businesses is extremely robust, with nearly all decisions being made independently, despite marital status, education level, or time spent working with Global Mamas. In analysis 2 regarding the NGO Global Mamas, my findings show data that compares the two business models. Business model 1, contracting directly with women business owners, allows women to greatly increase their income thus allowing women the capital to begin a savings account and work toward personal, family and career goals. These women also report happiness at their success with the NGO and plan to utilize their savings to further grow their businesses independently in the future. The women in this business model treat the NGO as a tool to reach their professional goals. However, women in business model 2 have not experienced an increase in wealth generation to date, which is reported as a negative effect of their work with the NGO. They do not see many alternate options for income generation in their area, which has led them to becoming employees of Global Mamas, but the high majority of women stated that they would prefer to be part of business model 1 or working in their own shops. One benefit the women do list from business model 2 is that they receive trade training on site, which will allow them to produce higher quality products in their personal businesses in the future. Global Mamas ought to continue to contract with women small business owners, but should also expand this opportunity to women in the regions where they currently only offer business model 2. If women were able to self select into the business model that best fits their needs, whether flexibility and possibility for increased income (business model 1) or stable income and trade training (business model 2), this NGO would be better achieving their mission of empowering women. As it stands now, Global Mamas is rather offering employment than empowerment activities in the regions where they exclusively offer business model 2. If this is the direction the NGO wishes to continue, it would be best to rework their marketing, recognizing the pre-existing empowered decision making status of women in Ghana in the productive work sector and framing their work as employment rather than empowerment. This could be achieved through more rigorous monitoring and evaluation. However, if a re-focus back to women's empowerment programs is the priority of the NGO, this could be achieved by implementing a GAD feminist theoretical model to assess their impact as well as outcomes of business model 2 and design new ways of framing their work.
