Africa Gender Innovation Lab
80 items available
Permanent URI for this collection
The Gender Innovation
Lab (GIL) conducts impact
evaluations of development
interventions in Sub-Saharan
Africa, seeking to generate
evidence on how to close
the gender gap in earnings,
productivity, assets and
agency. The GIL team is
currently working on over
50 impact evaluations in 21
countries with the aim of
building an evidence base
with lessons for the region.
Items in this collection
1 - 10 of 23
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Publication
Policy Solutions to Close Gender Gaps in the Agriculture Sector in Nigeria
(Washington, DC, 2022-07)Substantial gender gaps exist in labor force participation and productivity in the agriculture sector in Nigeria. Closing the gender productivity gap in agriculture could lead to sizable gains in the Nigerian economy, boosting gross domestic product. Key factors driving the gender gaps in agriculture include women farmers’ limited use of farm inputs, choice of lowvalue crops, and lower productivity of hired labor. To successfully close gender gaps, policy makers not only need a detailed account of what drives these gaps, but also a rigorous evidence base on cost-effective policy options. This brief offers guidance on interventions that could be adopted to address the underlying constraints faced by women farmers in Nigeria. These recommendations could also meaningfully inform the framework and implementation of the National Gender Policy on Agriculture. -
Publication
Coping with COVID-19 Shocks in Western Uganda
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-09)In Western Uganda, women farmers and their households were facing widespread agricultural and non-agricultural income shocks in September 2020, indicating a protracted crisis. To cope with these shocks, many households liquidated productive agricultural assets. Women who had higher decision-making power within the household before the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis, appeared to cope better with post-outbreak shocks by engaging in more income-generating activities and having better food security in the household. -
Publication
Measuring Women’s Control Over Assets
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-08)Gender inequalities in the ownership, control, and use of assets are a widespread and pervasive development challenge. Persistent gender gaps remain in women’s access to land, housing, and financial assets. Expanding women’s control over assets is key not only for improving gender equality, but also for promoting economic development and wellbeing. Researchers and policymakers have made important progress addressing many of the challenges posed by the heterogenous conceptualization of asset ownership across contexts. But knowledge gaps persist regarding the extent of women’s ownership and rights over assets, the nature and implications of gender differences in reporting data on property rights, and the best practices for questionnaire design and data collection protocols. This brief summarizes existing knowledge gaps in the three key measurement areas and lays out how the measures for advancing gender equality (MAGNET) initiative plans to tackle them. The ultimate goal is to generate rigorous empirical evidence to advise on the best tools to measure and analyze women’s control over assets. -
Publication
Measuring Women’s Goal Setting and Decision-Making
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-08)Improving women’s agency is crucial for advancing gender equality. Less than half of women in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia participate in making decisions over their own health care, major household purchases, and visiting their families. Improving women’s ability to define goals and act on them is an important - and urgent - policy goal. Yet the understanding of how to achieve this goal is hampered by the lack of adequate measurement tools and recognized best practices. Research is needed to broaden and deepen the measurement of women’s goal setting and decision-making, both within and outside the household. This brief summarizes existing knowledge gaps in the two measurement areas and lays out how the measures for advancing gender equality (MAGNET) initiative plans to tackle them. -
Publication
Measuring Women’s Sense of Control and Efficacy
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-08)Increasing women’s sense of control over their lives is key to reducing gender inequalities and improving development outcomes. Research suggests women tend to believe less in their abilities to act effectively towards their goals and they provide more importance than men to external factors determining their life events. Understanding the degree to which women perceive control over their lives is critical for designing and adapting policies to change limiting local norms. Social expectations about women’s unpaid care roles impose severe constraints on women’s well-being and livelihoods and are, thus, integrally linked to women’s agency. Yet, this linkage is not well defined in recent measures of women’s empowerment, which tend to incorporate time use only in terms of time poverty or having an excessive workload. This brief summarizes existing knowledge gaps in the three key measurement areas and lays out how the measures for advancing gender equality (MAGNET) initiative plans to tackle them. -
Publication
The Impacts of COVID-19 on Women-Owned Enterprises in Ethiopia: Findings from a High-Frequency Phone Survey
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-07)This brief summarizes findings from a high-frequency survey of women-owned firms in Ethiopia which participate in the International Development Association (IDA) - financed Women Entrepreneurship Development Project (WEDP). Over the past five years, WEDP reached nearly 40,000 women-owned firms in Ethiopia with meso-loans and business training. Many WEDP firms had been on a high-growth trajectory, with firms that benefited from WEDP services growing incomes by 67 percent and employment by 55 percent over a three-year period prior to the crisis. This brief is based on the results from the first round of the survey, implemented between May 15, 2020 and June 15, 2020, revealing some initial insights into the scale of the impacts and the nature of the challenges currently facing the WEDP firms. -
Publication
What’s Mine is Yours: Pilot Evidence from a Randomized Impact Evaluation on Property Rights and Women’s Empowerment in Cote d’Ivoire
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-06)The protection of formal institutions can help to strengthen women’s property rights, potentially improving welfare and economic efficiency of the household with broader implications. Individual land certification in women’s names and civil marriage registration offer two routes for women towards a more formal delineation of their property rights. In the context of the World Bank Land Policy Improvement and Implementation Project (PAMOFOR), this pilot project examines what drives the take-up of innovative interventions that aim to strengthen women’s property rights in rural Cote d’Ivoire: providing economic incentives for a man to register land in his wife’s name, shifting attitudes through an emotionally resonant video, and encouraging civil marriage in the wake of a new legal reform. Pilot results show how highlighting the benefits of women’s land ownership for family harmony, economic efficiency, and security for the family can induce husbands to reallocate land to their wives. -
Publication
COVID-19 Impacts on Women Factory Workers in Ethiopia: Results from High-Frequency Phone Surveys
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-06)As the Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic continues to disrupt international supply chains and local economies, workers employed in export-oriented industries are likely to experience both demand and supply shocks due to the crisis. In Ethiopia, a slowed global economy can pose a significant threat to the country’s industrial parks and their factories in the female-concentrated garment industry, forcing them to lay off workers or even shut down their operations. To monitor the potential effects of the pandemic and support the design of evidence-based policy responses, the gender innovation policy initiative for Ethiopia (GIPIE) is conducting a high-frequency phone survey on a sample of 323 recently hired female factory workers in Ethiopia. This brief reports on the first two waves of data collected between late March and late May 2020, showing the evolution of this sample of female workers’ employment status, earnings, and expectations over the course of the pandemic. Due to the size of the sample and the fact that it only includes recent hires at the Bole Lemi Industrial Park, the results may not generalize for the full population of women factory workers in industrial parks. Data collection from the ongoing high-frequency phone survey of women factory workers in Bole Lemi Industrial Park will continue in the coming months, with recurring surveys every month for a total of 6 rounds. By tracking the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, these data collection efforts aim to equip policymakers with timely, actionable data to better design and implement policy responses in support of Ethiopia’s women factory workers. -
Publication
COVID-19 Pandemic Through a Gender Lens
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-06)The coronavirus (COVID-19) (coronavirus) pandemic has led to disruptions of both social and economic activities across the globe. While the early narrative described COVID-19 (coronavirus) as the "great equalizer," asserting that the virus is capable of infecting anyone, it is critical for policymakers to understand that the impacts of COVID-19 (coronavirus) will not be the same for everyone. Experience from previous epidemics suggest that COVID-19 (coronavirus) will impact groups who are most vulnerable and amplify any existing inequalities across countries, communities, households and individuals. This note focuses on the existing gender inequalities in the economic sphere in Sub-Saharan Africa and summarizes how the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic could affect women and girls disproportionately. It draws on impact evaluation research to showcase policy options to help build women's economic resilience and minimize any potential negative impacts during the pandemic and recovery. -
Publication
Reducing the Agricultural Gender Gap in Cote d'Ivoire: How has it Changed?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-02)Over the last decade, Cote d’Ivoire has witnessed a remarkable shrinking of its gender gap in agricultural productivity. When comparing similar households, the gender gap has been reduced by 32 percent.