Measuring Women's Empowerment and the Impact of Ethiopia's Women's Development Initiatives Project

Abstract

This report discusses the World Bank aided Women's Development Initiatives Project (WDIP), under implementation in Ethiopia. The study assesses the empowerment status of Ethiopian women in both rural and urban areas, and evaluates the impact of participation in WDIP on women's empowerment. Empowerment status and impact are measured against indicators in the economic, political, social, and psychological domains, on the assumption that WDIP, a project designed to expand economic opportunities, strengthen self-reliance, and build awareness, will affect outcomes in all these spheres. WDIP is a community-driven development project that seeks to enhance women's empowerment and participation in development interventions by mobilizing women at the grassroots level and capitalizing on their potential to support development processes. WDIP seeks to redress gender imbalances in development opportunity by investing in women's skills, productivity, and organizational capacity. This report is structured as follows: section one gives introduction. Section two outlines the objective and conceptual framework. Section three presents research design and methodology. Section four focuses on analysis of women's empowerment and the determinants of empowerment. Section five presents impact evaluation of WDIP.