Women's empowerment

News

Photo of the three SPRING team members posing together.

SPRING participated in the CORE Group Global Health Practitioner Conference, delivering a presentation on engaging men for improved nutrition, and sharing research on hemoglobin measurement...

Photo of a group of women.

SPRING presented at the 1,000 Days Advocacy Working Group Meeting on six years of work highlighting gender equity for improved nutrition.

A woman holding her baby stands in a dusty field.

SPRING/Ghana is maximizing chances for achieving more results from its multi-sectoral nutrition programs by prioritizing implementation in LEAP 1,000 communities.

A group of fathers sits in chairs under a tree while one man uses a flip chart of good health behaviors to conduct a training.

Father-to-Father support groups encourage men to take an active role in the health and nutrition of their families.

A trainee practices starting the motor of a cereal processor.

SPRING/Senegal trained six partner networks in Senegal on the technical and business elements of operating processing machines.

VSLA group members purchasing shares.

SPRING/Ghana uses VSLAs so mother-to-mother support groups can improve their economic status with savings and loans to meet immediate needs.

SPRING/Senegal Gender Advisor Daba Ndione Beye interacts with training participants.

SPRING/Senegal organized a workshop for representatives of partner networks to raise awareness on gender issues and promote men and women as partners in household decision-making for good...

Group of women sitting in a circle outside

Happy #IWD2016! Learn how SPRING is empowering women through better nutrition.

Videos

A woman, dressed in orange, checks on her chicken coops.

Ever since she has been using improved poultry production practices, Ndèye Khady has improved her family’s nutrition and her financial autonomy. She can now help her husband with household...

A man and woman stand at opposite sides of the frame. The couple is in the process of handing a chicken from the woman to the man.

Salamata’s neighbor has lost her rooster and is looking for it. She tells Salamata that she is impressed that Salamata's husband supports her in building and managing their chicken coop. 

Four women making a hajol for chicken rearing.

This short video is a brief overview of the work that SPRING has been doing in Bangladesh since the project began in 2012.

Job Aids and Tools

Abdou Dramé, chef de village, entrain de donner à manger à son fils en compagnie de son épouse, Ndèye Sakho. Thiaré (Kaolack)

L’objectif global de cette activité est de renforcer les capacités des membres des réseaux de producteurs agricoles et des réseaux de santé/nutrition communautaires sur la thématique genre...

Keywords: Women's empowerment, Agriculture
Location: Senegal

Reports

A mother holds her baby up in the air. Both look happy. The mother smiles at the baby. The baby smiles at the camera.

SPRING implemented an innovative, scalable, and sustainable community-based, multi-channel, integrated nutrition program between April 2012 and June 2017 in Bangladesh.

A woman sits in her garden

The goal of the research was to measure empowerment among FNS beneficiaries and to compare the average WEAI score among different cohorts of the FNS program and, using the BIHS data, to...

Success Stories

A groundnut farmer receives an award from a FFS instructor.

Then Ganabi joined a farmer field school (FFS) managed by SPRING, USAID’s multi-sectoral nutrition project. The FFS trainings teach farmers good agronomic practices, which make it easier to...

Aminci Support Group members contribute money to a common pool of funds that can be used to increase the diversity of foods eaten by their families.

To bring better infant and young child feeding practices to caregivers like the ones in Kajuru Ward, the FMOH—with support from UNICEF—is rolling out the C-IYCF Counselling Package. As part...

Nasima’s family helps her prepare and use the compost that allows them to grow more nutritious vegetables. Photo credit: SPRING/Bangladesh

The creation and use of compost is just one of the many agricultural techniques taught to the local farmer nutrition school students in Bangladesh's Barisal and Khulna Divisions.

During her pregnancy, Denise’s sister-in-law benefitted from healthy produce grown in the household garden.

Denise Dougnon, 38, lives in Ama Iré village in the Mopti Region of Mali with her husband, two children, two sisters-in-law, and a brother-in-law. A graduate of the local (FNS) administered...

Galleries

Participants and trainers pose for a group photo.

From May 4-8, 2017, SPRING/Senegal trained six partner networks in Senegal on the technical and business elements of operating machinery that can be used to lower the burden of post-harvest...

Actors animatedly play their roles in the sketch by raising their arms and with pained expressions on their faces.

On World Malaria Day 2017, SPRING/Senegal organized a social mobilization event in Dinguiraye Commune with our partner, APROFES, and Senegal’s Unit for the Fight Against Malnutrition (CLM...

Participants listen attentively as facilitators elaborate on the importance of women’s empowerment as it relates to nutrition.

SPRING/Senegal organized a workshop for representatives of partner networks to raise awareness on gender issues and promote men and women as partners in household decision-making for good...

SPRING Staff Pledge for Gender Parity on International Women's Day 2016

Women are at the heart of our work to improve nutrition. In this collection of photos, SPRING staff from around the world are celebrating International Women's Day 2016 and pledging to take...

Keywords: Gender, Women's empowerment
Location: Ghana, Senegal, Uganda

Training Materials

Women holds a net with a fish

Farmer Nutrition School (FNS) is a community-based learning approach that promotes the Essential Nutrition Actions (ENA) and the Essential Hygiene Actions (EHA) by teaching the production...

Activities

Events

Women's Empowerment Mitigates the Negative Effects of Low Production Diversity on Maternal and Child Nutrition in Nepal

In the December 2015 Ag2Nut call, the Community of Practice presented a synthesis of a set of eight new studies that empirically test, using data from Africa and South Asia, whether a...

Focus group

The webinar on Thursday, April 30, 2015 unpacked how two agricultural livelihoods and food systems investments strive to improve household nutrition

Keywords: Women's empowerment, Agriculture
Location: Online

Pages

Resource Review Summaries

Agricultural interventions may fail to improve nutritional outcomes if they do not take account of time constraints, particularly of rural women who spend a considerable portion of their...

In 2017, the United Nations World Food Program published a report on a five-country study on how WFP’s Food Assistance for Assets (FFA) work can contribute to empowering women and improving...

Livestock development programs seek to amplify resilience in low-income communities but often fail to consider the costs to intended beneficiaries or the effect of prevailing gender norms...

Over the past 50 years, understandings of the best ways to combat malnutrition among women and children globally have changed, along with the technology that exists to fight it. The IMMANA-...

This blog captures findings of a study that assessed how the strategies and interventions of the UN Joint Programme on accelerating progress towards the economic empowerment of rural women...

Filling a need to provide empirical evidence on agriculture’s contribution to nutrition, IFPRI’s discussion paper reviews recent evidence (since 2014), including findings from impact...

The WEIA tool, launched in 2012, has now been rolled-out in 19 Feed the Future focus countries. This webinar provides an overview of the updated WEAI tool and takes stock of current...

Dr. Cynthia Matare lead the first of five installments in a joint webinar series from The ANH Academy and the African Nutrition Society exploring critical links between agriculture,...

Keywords: Agriculture, Women's empowerment
Location: Zambia

Mercy Lung’aho, nutritionist for the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, grapples with the gap between food security and nutrition in Rwanda. While hunger has been reduced by...

Keywords: Agriculture, Women's empowerment
Location: Rwanda

Women’s Empowerment Mainstreaming And Networking (WEMAN) is an initiative which focuses on gender mainstreaming in rural development with the objective of contributing to food and income...

Empowering women is a critical component to improving food security. But what does women's empowerment in agriculture look like and how can practitioners design activities to promote it?...

Why would talking about a clock help a family grow more food? In this guest blog, Emily Hillenbrand highlights the work of the Pathways program, which focuses on getting women farmers...

Approaches that improve women’s engagement in livestock value chains and their impact on women’s empowerment and maternal and child nutrition (MCN) can be powerful in improving women’s and...

This series of technical briefs provides an overview of key issues related to women’s economic empowerment: unpaid care work; engaging and working with men; and, promoting women’s...

During this webinar, the inaugural round of fellows from the IMMANA program highlighted their research on developing new methodological approaches to guide agricultural interventions for...

This webinar explored women's health and empowerment; critical factors that are frequently overlooked in agriculture and nutrition research. With the focus of interventions and studies so...

The Intervention Guide for the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) is a resource to help USAID missions and implementers design interventions for the domains of empowerment...

This article aims to increase the evidence base around the benefits of integrated agriculture and nutrition programs for children’s health and nutrition outcomes. It presents the results of...

To address the continuing injustices faced by women across the globe, this year’s theme for International Women’s Day (IWD) was “Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality.” This...

This workshop launched the second phase of the IFPRI-led Gender, Agriculture and Assets Projects (GAAP2), in Nairobi, Kenya. GAAP2 aims to develop measurements for women’s empowerment in...

Addressing unequal power relations between men and women is part of the solution to achieving improved nutrition and agricultural outcomes. This report assesses the women’s empowerment...

Inequality determines who eats and what they eat—this in turn affects peoples’ resilience in the face of climate change and other environmental factors. This report recommends priorities...

This paper analyzes the concepts, empirical evidence, analytical frameworks, and recommendations of the multifaceted pathways through which gender and health interact. With an emphasis on...

The Women’s Empowerment Agriculture Index (WEAI) is a measure meant to capture women’s inclusion in the agricultural sector. This webinar discussed the creation of the WEAI and the...

Analyzing data collected from a 2012 baseline data of the Feed the Future population-based survey in Ghana and the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index, this article examines the...

This webinar featured two Feed the Future activities, the Integrated Improved Livelihoods Program (IILP), and The Rwanda Dairy Competitiveness Program II (RDCP). The webinar discusses these...

The authors of this paper aim to empirically infer causal linkages between fruit and vegetable production, individual intake, food security, and anemia. Qualitative research and econometric...

Working to update their previous IFPRI work, “Explaining Child Malnutrition in Developing Countries” (2000), Lisa Smith and Lawrence Haddad draw on data from 1970-2012 across 116 countries...

Transform Nutrition, a consortium of development partners funded by the UK and led by IFPRI, recently released a 2-page brief on current efforts to link gender and nutrition. In particular...

LANSA is a research partnership focused on improving agriculture interventions and food policy to improve nutrition. They recently released a call for policy-related research, with a...

SPRING, TOPS, and USAID hosted the final segment in a three-part webinar series, Women's Empowerment and Men's Engagement: How a Focus on Gender Can Support Agriculture and Nutrition....

A collaborative report that identifies factors responsible for low-productivity among female-managed farms in Africa, with a particular focus on Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania,...

Access event resources from the second SPRING, TOPS, and USAID webinar in a three-part series, Women's Empowerment and Men's Engagement: How a Focus on Gender Can Support Agriculture and...

SPRING has developed a series of briefs that illustrate how evidence-based pathways and principles can strengthen agriculture and nutrition linkages under Feed the Future. Short vignettes...

SPRING, TOPS, and USAID kicked off the first event in its webinar series, Women’s Empowerment and Men’s Engagement: How a Focus on Gender Can Support Agriculture and Nutrition, with a...

Drawing on household survey data from Nepal, this paper investigates the impact of women’s empowerment in agriculture and production diversity on dietary diversity and anthropometric...