- autonomy in decisions about household/own agricultural production; decision-making power over agricultural productive assets (WEAI<sup>16</sup> , discussed in various publications including Malapit and Quisumbing 2015, and Alkire et al. 2013)

- time use/ allocation of household chores between men and women (WEAI, Garikipati et al 2008)

- reproductive health views and behaviors (Bandiera et al. 2014)

- belongs to women’s groups/speaks up in public (WEAI).

In forming an index, some authors use the “relative deprivations” approach followed by Alkire et al. (2013) and Garikipati (2008), assigning a score to each dimension and then aggregating the dimensions into a simple index. While providing a clean variable for use in multivariate statistical analysis, this approach does not help in understanding which dimensions matter for a specific outcome. In addition, Peterman et al. (2015) show that, not surprisingly, how women are ranked on empowerment is highly dependent on how the index is constructed. In addition, when Hanmer and Klugman (2016) analyzed the correlations among DHS indicators on attitudes and behaviors that represent dimensions of empowerment, they found fairly low correlations, indicating that an index of these variables may be problematic.

Can measurement be standardized across countries? The DHS surveys have, for some time, used a standardized set of questions in low-income countries around the world to measure women’s decision making power in the household and women’s and men’s attitudes toward the acceptability of GBV. These variables are now widely used in empowerment studies. Are they reliable across countries? Donald et al. (2016) showed that the degree of correlation between husband’s (male partner) and wife’s responses on decision making power is less than perfect, and varies substantially across countries. For example, when couples were asked separately who decides on large purchases, of the cases where the women report that the man did by themselves, 1/3 of the men reported it was joint. The meaning of this disagreement about women’s economic empowerment in the household is unclear, although it is clear that the wives often did not feel consulted. Ongoing work by Field and Glennerster has shown that women’s self-reported participation in expenditure decisions increased the more specific the questions were about particular situations (e.g. buying medicine vs. a general question about health-related expenditure decisions).

One way researchers have attempted to standardize subjective or self-reported responses across countries, particularly in areas where the variable has a meaning which is specific to the context, culture and tradition is to use vignettes, or short description of different types of people and their situations. Respondents are asked which description is most similar to their situation. Donald et al. (2016) showed that in a test of the WEAI index in Uganda, the vignette survey provided a more consistent measure of agency than the simple self-perception survey without vignettes. This was particularly important in measuring how social norms and customs in rural areas affect women’s choices and behaviors.

As discussed above, broad definitions of empowerment outcomes include both _attitudes_ (selfperception; views about institutions governing gendered behavior) and _behaviors_ (action taken). One

> 16 WEAI=Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index. It includes (i) women’s role in household production decisions; (ii) women’s role in household decisions about use of income; (iii) women’s rights, jointly or individually, to own, use and control assets; (iv) women’s leadership in the community; and (v) time use. It also focuses on whether the choice is the women’s own, or is imposed or coerced (one made primarily to avoid negative consequences).

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