The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that if you gave women equal access to information and resources as men, there would be 150 million fewer hungry people in the world. CARE’s Pathways program decided to give it a try with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—and saw not only production increase, but also women’s empowerment.
What did we accomplish?
- Families have more food: Food shortages dropped from 30% to 19%, and yields on millet went up 46%, and on sorghum 34%.
- People, especially women, get more income: Monthly income increased 20% (from $9.24 to $11.05). The effect was more dramatic for female-headed households, where income more than tripled (from $5.68 to 19.11 per month). Women in male-headed households saw their income nearly quadruple (3.8 times higher than baseline)
- Families are more resilient: The number of families adopting negative coping strategies dropped by 42%.
- Gaps between men and women closed: The gap between men and women in controlling assets has been cut in half, and the gap in control over production has gone down by 25%.
- Women are more empowered: The number of empowered women (according to CARE’s Women’s Empowerment Index) nearly tripled, up to 6.7%. While that is dramatic improvement, there is obviously still room for improvement. The average women’s empowerment score went up 43%. The number of women who could control assets went up nearly 2.5 times (from 31% to 75%).
How did we get there?
- Get women access to credit: 58% of women listed access to credit as the most effective part of the program. Women’s access to agricultural loans doubled, giving them more ability to invest in their production.
- Improve communication between men and women: Both women and men told evaluators that couples dialogue was one of their favorite activities, and one that had a profound impact on the way they interacted.
- Build women’s confidence: Women’s confidence to speak up in public improved 54%, up to 60%. This positions women to be leaders in their communities.
- Get communities involved in M&E: The Participatory Performance Tracker was very effective in getting communities to not only collect M&E data, but also examine what that data means for them, and how they could use it to shape their own behavior and their requests to government and CARE when they needed extra support.
- Engage men: The Personal Participatory Performance Tracker gives men a chance to look at their own behavior around gender equality, and puts the staff and communities into the same space of behavior change.
- Get women access to services: Women’s ability to access extension workers and information more than tripled, up to 62.5%.
Want to learn more?
Visit www.care.org/pathways.