AUGUST 2021 Measuring Women’s Sense Measures for Advancing Gender Equality (MAGNET) of Control and Efficacy The Measures for Advancing Gender Equality (MAGNET) initiative aims to broaden and deepen the measurement of women’s agency, MOTIVATION AND POLICY RELEVANCE based on the development of new tools and Increasing women’s sense of control over their lives is key to reducing rigorous testing and comparison of both new gender inequalities and improving development outcomes (Wuepper and and existing methods for measuring agency, Lybbert 2017; Donald et al. 2020). Research suggests women tend to and promoting the adoption of these measures at scale. By increasing the availability of believe less in their abilities to act effectively towards their goals and they innovative meaningful measures of agency provide more importance than men to external factors determining their life for a broad range of contexts, we hope our events (Sherman, Higgs, and Williams 1997; Dercon, and Singh 2013). An work will lead to an improved understanding individual’s sense of control over their life is also inexorably linked to the of what women’s agency is, how it manifests control over their time. However, gender inequalities in time allocations are and how it can best be measured across pervasive. On average, women spend about three times as many hours as contexts given the research question at hand. men on domestic and care work (United Nations 2020). MAGNET is a collaboration between the World Bank’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab Understanding the degree to which women perceive control over their lives and Living Standards Measurement Study is critical for designing and adapting policies to change limiting local norms. (LSMS) teams, the International Food Policy This is particularly important given the proliferation of interventions that seek Research Institute (IFPRI), the International to transform gender norms through group-based discussions, community Rescue Committee (IRC), and researchers mobilization, or economic strategies (Abramsky et al. 2016; Ellsberg et al. at Oxford University. We plan to develop a range of new survey tools, each tested 2015). Yet, more work is needed to know how to best capture women’s sense across multiple contexts. MAGNET focuses of control and ability over their economic lives, and how it relates to well-being on three dimensions of women’s agency that outcomes (Edmonds, Feigenberg,and Leight 2020; McKelway 2021). have high potential for catalyzing progress on women’s economic empowerment, but Social expectations about women’s unpaid care roles impose severe for which the body of existing measurement constraints on women’s well-being and livelihoods and are, thus, integrally methods is weak or under-tested: (i) linked to women’s agency. Yet, this linkage is not well defined in recent ownership and control of assets, (ii) goal- measures of women’s empowerment, which tend to incorporate time use setting and decision-making, and (iii) sense of control and efficacy. only in terms of time poverty or having an excessive workload. While a focus on time poverty is useful and intuitive from a well-being perspective—a http://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/africa-gender-innovation-lab long workday decreases individual well-being, in terms of locus of control since, for example, an individual might physical and mental fatigue— what time poverty reveals believe that outcomes may be affected by one’s behavior about agency is less clear (Eissler et al. 2021). but not that they themselves are able to manifest that behavior. We may expect self-efficacy to be very relevant Women’s individual agency also depends on the power for many economic decisions, and particularly so for they derive from interacting and working with others to women in low-income settings (Wuepper and Lybbert pursue shared goals. This important aspect of agency 2017). In terms of measurement, there have been two is commonly defined as “collective agency”. Existing main ways to characterize self-efficacy. One is to treat measures are currently too difficult to scale up (owing it as domain-specific, which has implied using domain- to interview length), inadequately conceptualized, or specific self-efficacy scales. In developing countries, conditional on membership in a group. these scales have been adapted to measure women’s agency in entrepreneurship, health, or contraceptive use This brief summarizes existing knowledge gaps in these (Asante and Doku 2010; Shaweno and Tekletsadik 2013; three key measurement areas and lays out how the McKenzie and Puerto 2017; Closson et al. 2018; Bahorski Measures for Advancing Gender Equality (MAGNET) et al. 2019). But to our knowledge, there are currently initiative plans to tackle them. no validated self-efficacy scales specific to agriculture in low-income countries, although the agricultural sector EXISTING KNOWLEDGE GAPS employs most of the labor force across these countries. The second measurement approach is to conceptualize Understanding women’s sense of self-efficacy as a generalized personality trait and control over their economic lives measure it with General Self-Efficacy Scales, which have Measuring women’s agency requires understanding to been shown to be associated with positive outcomes what degree women believe they can purposefully achieve such as female education and employment aspirations their goals (Kabeer 1999; Donald et al. 2020). A common (Roy, Morton, and Bhattacharya 2018). But there is still conceptualization in psychology is an individual’s locus of a need for a measure that is applicable across economic control (Rotter 1966): the degree to which an individual activities and captures livelihoods in general, rather than believes that events are caused by one’s own behavior a generalized personality trait, in low-income contexts. versus external factors (chance or powerful others). Available evidence suggests that a greater internal locus Understanding women’s control of control is associated with positive outcomes including over time allocations human capital, technology adoption, employment Time allocations display highly gendered patterns across outcomes, and savings (Coleman and DeLeire the globe. Women experience much higher levels of time 2003,  Heckman et al. 2006; Clark, Kassenboehmer, poverty due to the disproportionate share of care and and Sinning 2016; Abay, Blalock, and Berhane 2017; domestic work they bear. This limits the number of hours Wuepper, Zilberman, and Sauer 2020). These previous they can dedicate to other activities such as training and studies, including the ones focusing on developing working. Recent work has made progress towards the countries, usually apply generalized measures of locus measurement of time poverty in low-income countries of control. But long-standing critiques of this approach (Wodon and Bardasi 2006; Khanna and Thomas 2019; express that it is both a multidimensional construct and Rubiano-Matulevich and Viollaz 2019; Seymour et al. 2019). domain-specific, and therefore, measurement tools should account for these aspects. In addition, little is But further research is needed to understand how to known about which “powerful others” individuals have in interpret time allocations as reflections of women’s mind when we try to measure individuals’ external locus agency across settings. Eissler et al. (2021) show that of control. time-use agency, defined as the confidence in and the ability to make an act upon strategic choices about how A related psychological concept is the construct of self- to allocate one’s time, is salient among both women efficacy: the belief in one’s abilities to produce the relevant and men and dictates how women and men can make actions to act effectively towards goals (Bandura 1982; and act upon strategic decisions related to their time 2006). It captures a different dimension of agency than use. Key knowledge gaps persist in understanding the interplay among women’s preferences, social pressure, conditional on membership in a group. There are also and internalized social norms in determining women’s very few tools capturing women’s collective agency time allocations. For instance, we may not always want when interviewing groups as a whole. We aim to shed to interpret working long hours as a reflection of a lack of light on several questions including: how can we measure agency; hours worked will depend on both an individual’s collective agency when interviewing groups as a whole? control over her time use and her preferences (Laszlo et How can individuals achieve goals within groups? Which al. 2020; Eissler et al. 2021). types of groups are most effective at empowering Understanding the components and gendered patterns of women? How can different groups increase their impact cognitive labor also remains largely understudied. According on collective agency? to Daminger (2019), cognitive labor includes anticipating needs, identifying options for meeting those needs, deciding among the options, and monitoring the results. MAGNET WORKPLAN Albeit distinct from the physical and emotional dimensions MAGNET will design new scales to measure locus of of household labor, cognitive labor is related to multitasking, control, agricultural self-efficacy, and a generalized time fragmentation, and time pressure. But, from a efficacy livelihoods scale. We will also develop new theoretical perspective, it remains unclear how cognitive survey instruments for measuring women’s control labor relates to agency. MAGNET plans to answer several over time allocation and validate it using a combination research questions, such as: What are the components of of qualitative studies, vignettes, and lab-in-the-field cognitive labor? How is cognitive labor distributed between experiments. Once validated, the instrument could be men and women in dual-adult households? How does this added to existing time-use survey methods, allowing for differ from how physical labor is distributed? What is the interpretation of time-use patterns through the lens of relationship between the distribution of cognitive labor and women’s agency, or used as a substitute for traditional intra-household power dynamics? time-use survey methods in contexts where women’s agency is the primary outcome of interest. Finally, we Understanding women’s collective agency will develop a qualitative-led group-level instrument to Women’s agency is also constructed through interacting measure women’s collective agency. with others, deciding collectively, and working to pursue shared goals. Collective agency is important across Psychometric scales: multiple life domains including economic, family, or political MAGNET will develop and test new scales to capture decisions (Pandolfelli, Meinzen-Dick, and Dohrn 2007). The sense of agency. These will include: role of collective action for expanding women’s agency is not a new concept. Women’s associations have played a • A domain-specific agricultural self-efficacy scale key role in the expansion of women’s rights across history, applicable to low-income contexts. from suffragette movements to current feminist networks • A new short locus of control scale that delves (Evans and Nambiar 2013). Research in development deeper into who are the “powerful others.” economics shows that women’s participation in groups can strengthen women’s voices inside and outside the • A Generalized Efficacy Livelihoods Scale to capture to what extent women perceive a sense of control household and significantly improve their well-being (Brody and ability over their economic lives, and how it et al. 2015, 2017). Yet nationally representative surveys relates to economic and wellbeing outcomes. have generally ignored women’s collective agency and have failed to properly measure it (Yount et al. 2020). This is partly because it is hard to measure and the relationships Group-based surveys: between collective action and women’s agency are both MAGNET will develop a modular survey tool to measure domain-specific and context-heterogenous. Commonly collective agency at a group-level and pilot it with different used measures are currently too difficult to scale up (owing types of groups with varying gender compositions across to interview length), inadequately conceptualized, or several countries. Lab-in-the-field experiments: different respondents understand questions similarly MAGNET will adapt and implement lab-in-the-field across cultures and contexts—to better understand the experiments (Almås et al., 2018; Agness et al. 2021) to motivation behind men’s and women’s time allocations. elicit men’s and women’s valuation of time and control The goal is to understand to what extent observed over income via short-term job offers with varying wage time use corresponds to an exercise of agency. The and payment schemes. vignettes will be administered jointly with a standard 7-day recall-based time diary. In addition, MAGNET plans Qualitative research: to triangulate across these measurement tools to yield MAGNET will implement qualitative studies to identify which are the relevant cognitive actions in the study of richer insights on women’s sense of control and efficacy. cognitive labor. Each of the actions identified through this For example, we plan to triangulate answers from the qualitative work—such as who in the household is most time diaries and follow-up time-use questions with the likely to anticipate, identify, decide, and monitor each of time agency vignettes, and other measures of women’s the actions, and how satisfied individuals are with the empowerment to understand what time activities may outcomes achieved through these actions—will then be adapted as quantitative survey instrument. be classified as empowering, what each measurement approach is capturing, and how they can complement each other for a richer understanding of women’s time Vignettes: agency. The cognitive labor mixed-methods design will We will design, test, and validate vignettes—short descriptions of hypothetical individuals or situations also involve triangulation with standard 24-hour recall- meant to convey complicated concepts and ensure that based time diaries. Photo Credit: Vincent Tremeau, World Bank This work has been funded in part by the Umbrella Facility for Gender Equality (UFGE), which is a multi-donor trust fund administered by the World Bank to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment through experimentation and knowledge creation to help governments and the private sector focus policy and programs on scalable solutions with sustainable outcomes. The UFGE is supported with generous contributions from Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. To learn more about our partners, please visit Or contact World Bank Africa Gender Innovation Lab International Food Policy Research Institute Aletheia Donald (AFRGIL) (IFPRI) adonald@worldbank.org https://www.worldbank.org/en/ https://www.ifpri.org/ programs/africa-gender-innovation-lab Maria Hernandez-De-Benito International Rescue Committee (IRC) mhernandezdebeni@worldbank.org World Bank Living Standards Measurement https://www.rescue.org/ Study (LSMS) https://www.worldbank.org/ Oxford University en/programs/lsms https://www.ox.ac.uk/