Women problem has been the central issue of social and economic field both here and abroad. Women's empowerment is a participatory process, is extended free choice and the ability of an action, it means the right of control and decision-making in all aspects of political, economic, cultural, social and other rights are transferred to those who are denied the right to control the hands of women, to enhance social development resources and the decision and force. Measurement is a controversial content in the study of women’s empowerment. At present, methods for measuring empowerment include Gender Development Index (GDI), Gender Equity Measurement (GEM), quantitative investigation, ethnographic survey, focus group interview and case study.
Agricultural women's empowerment index (WEAI) is by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Oxford poverty and human development project (OPHI) joint development, it is to measure the weight status of Ministry of agriculture the first comprehensive, comprehensive, standard and direct measurement of women. The index consists of two parts, namely, the 5 dimensions of agricultural empowerment (5DE) and the gender difference index (GPI), with weights of 90% and 10% respectively.
According to the construction method of adjusted WEAI, we practiced a program from the "impact assessment of agricultural comprehensive development projects in poor areas of Inner Mongolia" supported by the international agricultural development fund in 2014. The project of data acquisition by household questionnaire structure mainly relates to Inner Mongolia Wulanchabu Chayouqian flag, chayouzhongqi, Chayouhouqi, Siziwangqi, Shangdu County, Huade County, Xinghe County, Liangcheng County, Zhuozi County, a total of 9 counties, a total of 900 households were.According to the research, sample impoverished county women's empowerment index increased from 0.794 in 2008 to 0.835 in 2014, an increase of 11.5%; the proportion of women empowerment is not also declined, falling from 25.3% in 2008 to 20.1% in 2014, down 25.9%. The women's empowerment index decomposition, the lack of control of agricultural production decisions and productive resources are the main factors that leading to women’s empowerment is insufficiency; in addition, the credit ability also affect women's empowerment. The three indicators of the contribution rate has greatly exceeded the weight reached 20%, 20% and 19.7% respectively, which indicates that the weight status in these three aspects of women than the other declined, so the more the need for intervention to improve women's ability and power. We also examine the influence of women's empowerment on food security. The results showed that there was a significant relationship between women's empowerment and food security, that is to say, in the case of other conditions unchanged, the more women’s empowerment, the higher their food security.
Please see the research paper attached [Chinese only].
Ms. Yanfang Huang