Last year, Genderaquafish posted on the new IFPRI, USAID, OPHI index on women’s empowerment in agriculture tool (see the post and links). Now, Christine Okali, one of the world’s foremost researchers on rural development and gender, has challenged the approach of the women’s empowerment index as being too specific, constrained to a point in time and failing to address the linkages between women and men in decision-making in the larger life settings. She suggests this is a step backwards to older approaches and concludes: “Surely a better understanding of the dynamics of decision-making, and therefore social change, would be a more satisfactory product for 2015 than an index that will only lead us back into an analytical, policy and programmatic cul-de-sac.”

Read Prof Okali’s blog at: http://www.future-agricultures.org/blog/entry/measuring-womens-empowerment-a-retrograde-step-#.UXonWuzAk6Z

This entry was posted in: Women