Publication:
Measuring Women’s Goal Setting and Decision-Making

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Files in English
English PDF (522.78 KB)
674 downloads
English Text (22.83 KB)
33 downloads
Date
2021-08
ISSN
Published
2021-08
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
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.
Link to Data Set
Citation
World Bank. 2021. Measuring Women’s Goal Setting and Decision-Making. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36272 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
Associated URLs
Associated content
Report Series
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue

Related items

Showing items related by metadata.

  • Publication
    Measuring Women’s Sense of Control and Efficacy
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-08) World Bank
    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
    Measuring Women’s Control Over Assets
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-08) World Bank
    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
    A Gender (R)evolution in the Making? Expanding Women's Economic Opportunities in Central America : A Decade in Review
    (Washington, DC, 2012-01) World Bank
    A Gender Revolution in the Making was produced by the World Bank as a special report on the dichotomy of the economic participation of women in Central America from 1997-2007. Central America made considerable progress during 1997-2006: stronger economic and political stability, overall positive albeit modest economic growth and improvements in socio-economic outcomes. Nonetheless, the panorama for women in the region, and in particular their ability to work and generate income is mixed. Labor force participation of women in Central America remained unchanged over the decade, with one in every two women of working age still not participating economically. This is lower than the rest of Latin America, a region with the lowest labor force participation in the world, although it has improved significantly in recent years. And yet, women in the region have made major advances in closing the gender earnings gaps and increasing their ability to earn income. Women's contribution to overall income generation in Central America rose significantly over the decade. This report aims to identify the factors behind these three trends. However, stagnant labor force participation rates for women contrasted with narrowing earnings gaps and a greater contribution to overall income apparent in Central America from 1997 to 2006.
  • Publication
    Supporting Women Throughout the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Emergency Response and Economic Recovery
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-04) World Bank
    This brief highlight evidence from the Africa gender innovation lab and other promising research on mechanisms that can help protect the lives and livelihoods of women and girls - at the household level, in firms and farms, and during adolescence - in the context of the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic.
  • Publication
    Women's Economic Empowerment in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06-29) World Bank
    The aim of this report is to identify binding constraints to women’s economic empowerment in the DRC and identify promising entry points to unbind these constraints. This report makes three core contributions. It provides: i) a comprehensive picture of gender gaps across the country, ii) an in-depth analysis of underlying drivers of the observed gender gaps, and iii) concrete policy and programmatic guidance on how to close the gender gaps.

Users also downloaded

Showing related downloaded files

  • Publication
    Remarks to the Annual Meetings 2020 Development Committee
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-10-16) Malpass, David
    David Malpass, President of the World Bank Group, announced that the Board approved a fast track approach to emergency health support programs that now covers 111 countries. Most projects are well advanced, with average disbursement upward of 40 percent. The goal is to take broad, fast action early. The operational framework presented back in June has positioned the Bank to help countries address immediate health threats and social and economic impacts and maintain our focus on long-term development. The Bank is making good progress toward the 15-month target of 160 billion dollars in surge financing. Much of it is for the poorest countries and will take the form of grants or low-rate, long-maturity loans. IFC, through the Global Health Platform, will be providing financing to vaccine manufacturers to foster expanded production of COVID-19 vaccines in both part 1 and 2 countries, providing production is reserved for emerging markets. The Development Committee holds a unique place in the international architecture. It is the only global forum in which the Governments of developed countries and the Governments of developing countries, creditor countries and borrower countries, come together to discuss development and the ‘net transfer of resources to developing countries.’ The current International Financial Architecture system is skewed in favor of the rich and creditor countries. It is important that all voices are heard, so Malpass urged the Ministers of developing countries to use their voice and speak their minds today. Malpass urged consideration of how we can build a new approach to debt restructuring that allows for a fair relationship and balance between creditors and debtors. This will be critical in restoring growth in developing countries; and helping reverse the inequality.
  • Publication
    Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21) Luna-Bazaldua, Diego; Levin, Victoria; Liberman, Julia; Gala, Priyal Mukesh
    This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.
  • Publication
    World Development Report 2006
    (Washington, DC, 2005) World Bank
    This year’s Word Development Report (WDR), the twenty-eighth, looks at the role of equity in the development process. It defines equity in terms of two basic principles. The first is equal opportunities: that a person’s chances in life should be determined by his or her talents and efforts, rather than by pre-determined circumstances such as race, gender, social or family background. The second principle is the avoidance of extreme deprivation in outcomes, particularly in health, education and consumption levels. This principle thus includes the objective of poverty reduction. The report’s main message is that, in the long run, the pursuit of equity and the pursuit of economic prosperity are complementary. In addition to detailed chapters exploring these and related issues, the Report contains selected data from the World Development Indicators 2005‹an appendix of economic and social data for over 200 countries. This Report offers practical insights for policymakers, executives, scholars, and all those with an interest in economic development.
  • Publication
    Doing Business 2014 : Understanding Regulations for Small and Medium-Size Enterprises
    (Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2013-10-28) World Bank; International Finance Corporation
    Eleventh in a series of annual reports comparing business regulation in 185 economies, Doing Business 2014 measures regulations affecting 11 areas of everyday business activity: Starting a business, Dealing with construction permits, Getting electricity, Registering property, Getting credit, Protecting investors, Paying taxes, Trading across borders, Enforcing contracts, Closing a business, Employing workers. The report updates all indicators as of June 1, 2013, ranks economies on their overall “ease of doing business”, and analyzes reforms to business regulation – identifying which economies are strengthening their business environment the most. The Doing Business reports illustrate how reforms in business regulations are being used to analyze economic outcomes for domestic entrepreneurs and for the wider economy. Doing Business is a flagship product by the World Bank and IFC that garners worldwide attention on regulatory barriers to entrepreneurship. More than 60 economies use the Doing Business indicators to shape reform agendas and monitor improvements on the ground. In addition, the Doing Business data has generated over 870 articles in peer-reviewed academic journals since its inception.
  • Publication
    World Development Report 2011
    (World Bank, 2011) World Bank
    The 2011 World development report looks across disciplines and experiences drawn from around the world to offer some ideas and practical recommendations on how to move beyond conflict and fragility and secure development. The key messages are important for all countries-low, middle, and high income-as well as for regional and global institutions: first, institutional legitimacy is the key to stability. When state institutions do not adequately protect citizens, guard against corruption, or provide access to justice; when markets do not provide job opportunities; or when communities have lost social cohesion-the likelihood of violent conflict increases. Second, investing in citizen security, justice, and jobs is essential to reducing violence. But there are major structural gaps in our collective capabilities to support these areas. Third, confronting this challenge effectively means that institutions need to change. International agencies and partners from other countries must adapt procedures so they can respond with agility and speed, a longer-term perspective, and greater staying power. Fourth, need to adopt a layered approach. Some problems can be addressed at the country level, but others need to be addressed at a regional level, such as developing markets that integrate insecure areas and pooling resources for building capacity Fifth, in adopting these approaches, need to be aware that the global landscape is changing. Regional institutions and middle income countries are playing a larger role. This means should pay more attention to south-south and south-north exchanges, and to the recent transition experiences of middle income countries.