Value chain interventions for improving women’s economic empowerment in low- and middle-income countries have small positive effects on women’s mobility, decision-making, and leadership of organisations but low confidence due to methodological limitations.
The review in brief
This review evaluates the effectiveness of value chain interventions in improving women’s welfare. The review indicates that these interventions are successful in improving economic conditions for their beneficiaries; through acquisition of skills and improved inputs, rather than through improved access to markets. This review found small positive effects on women’s mobility, decision-making, and leadership of organisations but with low confidence due to methodological limitations. Qualitative findings point to the persistence of cultural barriers and other constraints.
What is this review about?
While women play a critical role in agriculture, they are confined to the least-valued sections of the value chain that have the lowest economic returns – this is influenced by the local, social and institutional contexts. Women have restricted access to execute their roles in value chains while at the same time they are also burdened with a higher expectation to deliver.
Value chain is conceptualised as the understanding of agricultural product markets and identifying unexploited non-farm opportunities.
What is the aim of this review?
The review aims to evaluate effectiveness of approaches, strategies and interventions focused on women’s engagement in the agricultural value chains that lead to their economic empowerment in low- and middle-income countries. The review summarises evidence from 118 studies: 4 mixed methods, 59 effectiveness and 55 process evaluations.
What are the main findings of the review?
The review finds that value chain interventions are successful in modestly improving women’s economic outcomes – income, assets holdings, productivity, and savings. The meta-analysis suggests that this occurs more through acquisition of skills and improved inputs, over improvement in access to profitable markets. These findings are limited by low confidence in methodological quality of the studies.
The quantitative analysis suggests that the interventions’ success in improving women’s economic outcomes does not always translate into an increase in non-economic empowerment. The quantitative effects on women’s mobility, decision-making, and leadership of organisations are positive, but limited in size. This suggests that although the interventions are able to change economic roles within value chains, these changes are not sufficiently strong to significantly alter gender roles within families and communities. Qualitative evidence displays persistence of cultural barriers and other constraints.
The interventions implemented in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are consistently more successful for all outcomes considered. However, few studies have been conducted in other areas of the world, therefore, the estimates from this area lack precision and statistical power.
Value chain interventions specifically targeted to women do not produce significantly larger economic impacts than non-targeted interventions. However, they produce slightly larger impacts on indicators of time use and non-economic empowerment. The qualitative findings identified facilitators to women’s empowerment which included capacity building, network formation, market access and land ownership as well as barriers such as exploitation, lack of information, stereotypes and lack of control over resources. Based on the qualitative findings, it is suggested that interventions promoting horizontal integration through farmer-based organisations, self-help groups, and cooperatives are important facilitators for promoting women’s participation, including leadership, decision-making, and access to the economic benefits of the interventions.
What do the findings of this review mean?
The review concludes that value chain interventions empower women, but perhaps to a lesser extent than expected. Economic empowerment does not immediately translate into empowerment within families and communities. Interventions should either moderate their expectations on empowerment goals, or they should be implemented in a way that ensures higher rates of participation among women and the acquisition of greater decision-making power.
This review is unable to conclude whether some interventions are more successful than others or to point to intervention mechanisms that are more likely to improve empowerment indicators to a sufficient level of confidence. However, qualitative and quantitative evidence included in the review suggest that untargeted value chain interventions are unlikely to produce the same impact on women’s empowerment as interventions targeted at women.