How Empowered are Bangladeshi Women in the Agricultural Setting? Empirical Evidence using a New Index

Using a nationally representative survey from Bangladesh, the paper presents how a recently developed index, Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), can be used to assess the extent of women’s empowerment in agriculture and diagnose areas where gaps in empowerment exist so that programmes and policies can be targeted to those areas. While the paper focuses mainly on women’s empowerment, it also examines the gaps in and factors associated with men’s empowerment. The results show that about 77 per cent of rural women in Bangladesh is disempowered compared to around 56 per cent of men. It is also seen that empowerment gaps for women are greatest in terms of leadership in the community and control and access to resources. For men, time poverty and lack of leadership within the community contribute most to disempowerment. The analysis shows that the areas in which men and women are disempowered are quite different, with the implication that, depending on local context, different programmes and policies are needed to empower women and men alike. This, in turn, means that the policymakers will have to pay attention to regional differences in factors contributing to the lack of empowerment of women and men. Finally, although sizeable proportions of men and women are shown to be disempowered along a number of indicators, the fact remains that a larger proportion of women are disempowered relative to men within their households. Achieving gender equality thus remains an important policy goal in Bangladesh.