The Participatory Index of Women’s Empowerment: development and an application in Tunisia

Natalie Naïri Quinn and Simone Lombardini

Oxford Development Studies, 2024, vol. 52, issue 1, 54-73

Abstract: In this paper we develop the Participatory Index of Women’s Empowerment, an innovative measurement tool that reflects its subjects’ own perceptions of empowerment. Participatory measurement is a response to the paradoxical potential for measurement of empowerment to disempower. A simple stated choice experiment allows participants to implicitly reveal the trade-offs that they make between different indicators of empowerment. This permits participatory determination of the relative weights for each indicator in a composite index, through estimation of a random utility model. We demonstrate the implementation of PIWE through a pilot application in the context of a quasi-experimental impact evaluation of an Oxfam project in Tunisia. Despite a relatively small sample size, we can reject the hypothesis that participants’ perceptions of empowerment are consistent with equal weights. We find that the project had a significant positive impact on participants’ empowerment and find suggestive evidence of impact on their perceptions of empowerment.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13600818.2023.2270437 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:oxdevs:v:52:y:2024:i:1:p:54-73

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CODS20

DOI: 10.1080/13600818.2023.2270437

Access Statistics for this article

Oxford Development Studies is currently edited by Jo Boyce and Frances Stewart

More articles in Oxford Development Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().