Measuring Empowerment

These activities include:

• a multi-country study, which has developed an analytic framework for measuring empowerment outcomes in five Bank-financed project;
• the development of a survey module which can be used for measuring empowerment at the country level, for example in the context of a poverty assessment;
• cross support work demonstrating how the analytic framework developed in the context of the multi-country study has been applied to the impact evaluation of an adult education project in Mexico.

Measuring Empowerment Study

Within many World Bank lending operations there exists significant experience of investing in empowerment. However, so far there is little evidence of a consistent analytic framework with which to measure empowerment or assess its impact on development outcomes. With the intention of enhancing both the Bank's as well as its clients' ability to analyze and monitor empowerment, the Empowerment Team of the Poverty Reduction Group organized a workshop on Measuring Empowerment, which was held in the Bank's Washington, DC office in February 2003. Parallel to that event, a multi-regional study on the same topic has been launched.

The specific objectives of the measuring empowerment study are (a) to assess the effect of investments in empowerment on both empowerment outcomes and development outcomes, and (b) to develop a set of indicators and instruments which can be used for tracking and evaluating these investments and their outcomes.

This multi-country, cross-sectoral study will enable the identification of a broad range of indicators, instruments and monitoring systems applicable in a variety of different environments. Following a series of discussions with the Bank's country and task teams, the subsequent lending instruments, all of which have the empowerment of people at the heart of their design, were selected as vehicles for measuring and monitoring empowerment: (1) the Honduras Community-Based Education Project; (2) the Ethiopia Women's Development Initiatives Project; (3) the Nepal Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Program; (4) the Indonesia Kecamatan Development Project; and (5) the Brazil Participatory Budget Initiative.

Over the past few months, the study team has developed a cross-country conceptual and analytic framework to guide the study. The team defines empowerment as increasing the capacity of individuals and groups to make choices and to transform those choices into desired outcomes. Whether and to what extent people are empowered depends on the interplay of two sets of factors: (1) people's assets, and (2) the institutional environment within which they operate.

The analytic framework specifies a series of research areas to ensure that a common data set can be collected for each case study. Country teams have used the cross-country analytic framework to develop country-specific data collection instruments. Following a pilot period, data collection has begun for all of the case studies. Details about the study's conceptual and analytic frameworks are contained in the attachment "Cross-Country Module."

Macro Indicators

In addition to its work on measuring and evaluating empowerment in the context of Bank supported projects, the Poverty Reduction Group has also developed a base survey and indicators to measure empowerment at the country level. The survey design is based on the same analytic framework that is used for the measuring empowerment study. While the ME study seeks to measure the empowerment status of project beneficiaries, the country indicators seek to capture the empowerment status of a country's population (or sub-groups there of) as a whole.

The survey differentiates between direct and intermediate indicators of empowerment. The former captures a population's "degree" of empowerment, the latter their "assets" and "opportunity structure". These concepts are explained in detail in the background paper accompanying the base survey.

The attached draft survey can be used as a stand-alone product or be modified and integrated into other poverty related surveys, such as Living Standard Measurement Surveys or Poverty Assessments.

Measuring Empowerment: Country Indicators (100kb PDF)

Draft Base Survey Module (388kb DOC)

Cross Support

The analytic framework developed in the context of the measuring empowerment study was recently used to structure the empowerment component of the impact evaluation of the Mexico Lifelong Learning and Training Project, currently under preparation. The following paragraphs will provide a brief description of the project and the explain how the ME framework was applied to inform the design of project's impact evaluation.

The Lifelong Learning and Training Project will give young adults who have dropped out of the formal school system the opportunity to obtain a secondary education. In addition to providing students with modules in Spanish, math, natural and social sciences, project beneficiaries will be offered modules that aim to equip them with a diverse series of skills and competences. These modules educate students, for example, about civic rights and responsibilities, legal procedures, parenting skills, conservation of the environment, domestic violence, and reproductive health.

The projects impacts, including on students' empowerment, will be evaluated on a regular basis. The project’s impact evaluation system will define empowerment as enhancing a student’s effective decision-making power. Education is crucial for empowerment as it improves students’ assets (e.g. skills, confidence and knowledge) thereby enabling them to make more informed and effective choices and decisions. The degree of students' empowerment depends on their ability to utilize the knowledge and skills acquired to make informed choices and achieve desired outcomes. This in turn will be influenced by the opportunity structure in which they live and work.

Participation in the lifelong learning project intends to empower students in different domains of their lives. Each module offered to students has a specific purpose or intention, often reflecting the aim to empower them in different domains. For example, modules dealing with women’s rights or domestic violence seek to empower women in relation to their partners (household subdomain). Modules about democracy and political participation are intended to empower students to become more active citizens (political subdomain). The choice of empowerment indicators reflects these intended outcomes.

Four groups of empowerment indicators have been identified. They fall into the following categories:

1. women’s autonomous decision-making within the household;
2. participation in public or political affairs;
3. taking action to improve one’s work situation; and
4. making decisions to improve one’s health.

The indicators are currently undergoing refinement and will then be formulated into an empowerment index.

Please watch this space for further updates.

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