Overview

The WEAI is a broad empowerment measure that includes a time dimension with two indicators: time use or workload, and satisfaction with leisure time. The original measure was based on empowerment theory and developed and tested in three settings. It is the most widely used approach to assessing time use in studies of complementary feeding, with adaptations noted below. The 24-hour recall approach involves burdensome data collection but is likely to be more accurate than asking respondents how much time is spent on a list of activities over a longer period.

• Indicator 1 – Time use: 24-hour recall time diary of all activities, including domestic work, care for children and elders, schoolwork, productive work or employment, and subsistence activities (e.g., farming, leisure, social and religious activities). Respondents report on “primary” and “secondary” activities because some tasks may be carried out simultaneously.
• Indicator 2 – Satisfaction with available time for leisure activities (e.g., visiting, TV, radio, movies, sports).

Scoring and Interpretation

As originally developed, the time dimension was scored as empowered/not empowered and was a component of an overall empowerment score. Most complementary feeding studies cited below analyzed time use as a continuous variable, and a few included satisfaction with leisure.

Time use: In original scoring, working >10.5 hours per day was categorized as an indicator of inadequate empowerment. Many studies use a continuous variable (range: 0–24) of hours worked in the past 24 hours, summing total time spent on work activities.

Satisfaction with leisure time: Inadequate <5 points, Adequate 5–10 points.

Citation

Alkire, Sabina, Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Amber Peterman, Agnes Quisumbing, Greg Seymour, and Ana Vaz. 2013. "The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index." World Development 52: 71-91.

Context and Applications to Child Nutrition

Bangladesh

Seymour, Greg, Yuta J. Masuda, Jason Williams, and Kate Schneider. 2019. "Household and Child Nutrition Outcomes Among the Time and Income Poor in Rural Bangladesh." Global Food Security 20: 82-92.

Nepal

Cunningham, Kenda, George B. Ploubidis, Purnima Menon, Marie Ruel, Suneetha Kadiyala, Ricardo Uauy, and Elaine Ferguson. 2015. "Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture and Child Nutritional Status in Rural Nepal." Public Health Nutrition 18(17): 3134-3145.

Kulkarni, Shibani, Edward A. Frongillo, Kenda Cunningham, Spencer Moore, and Christine E. Blake. 2020. "Women's Bargaining Power and Child Feeding in Nepal: Linkages Through Nutrition Information." Maternal & Child Nutrition 16(1): e12883.

Kulkarni, Shibani, Edward A. Frongillo, Kenda Cunningham, Spencer Moore, and Christine E. Blake. 2021. "Gendered Intrahousehold Bargaining Power is Associated with Child Nutritional Status in Nepal." The Journal of Nutrition 151(4): 1018-1024.

Malapit, Hazel Jean L., Suneetha Kadiyala, Agnes R. Quisumbing, Kenda Cunningham, and Parul Tyagi. 2015. "Women’s Empowerment Mitigates the Negative Effects of Low Production Diversity on Maternal and Child Nutrition in Nepal." The Journal of Development Studies 51(8): 1097-1123.

Tanzania

Santoso, Marianne V., Rachel N. Bezner Kerr, Neema Kassim, Haikael Martin, Elias Mtinda, Peter Njau, Kelvin Mtei, John Hoddinott, and Sera L. Young. 2021. "A Nutrition-Sensitive Agroecology Intervention in Rural Tanzania Increases Children's Dietary Diversity and Household Food Security But Does Not Change Child Anthropometry: Results from a Cluster-Randomized Trial." The Journal of Nutrition 151(7): 2010-2021.

Zambia

Kumar, Neha, Phuong Hong Nguyen, Jody Harris, Danny Harvey, Rahul Rawat, and Marie T. Ruel. 2018. "What It Takes: Evidence From a Nutrition-and Gender-Sensitive Agriculture Intervention in Rural Zambia." Journal of Development Effectiveness 10(3): 341-372.

Bangladesh, Nepal, Cambodia, Ghana, Mozambique

Komatsu, Hitomi, Hazel Jean L. Malapit, and Sophie Theis. 2018. "Does Women’s Time in Domestic Work and Agriculture Affect Women’s and Children’s Dietary Diversity? Evidence from Bangladesh, Nepal, Cambodia, Ghana, and Mozambique." Food Policy 79: 256-270.

Adaptations

Adaptations include using time use as continuous variable vs. dichotomous classification (e.g., >10.5 work hours considered indicator of inadequate empowerment). In complementary feeding studies, it has often been used to assess time use by women only, whereas the original approach compared data from men and women.

NOTE: Seymour et al. (2019) study on time poverty used Bangladesh Integrated Health Survey data collected using WEAI, but authors adapted analysis as follows: Compared “time poverty” defined by five different thresholds of women's time allocation (relative to the median time spend on paid and unpaid work), based on 24-hour recall time diary on primary activities.

Formative Research

The original WEAI was developed through extensive research and testing in Bangladesh, Guatemala, and Uganda, including qualitative research to assess relevance of constructs and measures across contexts and cognitive testing to test comprehension of survey items. Information on formative research specific to time sufficiency was not provided (Alkire et al. 2013).

Notes: In the original paper (Alkire et al. 2013), overall empowerment scores from the WEAI were found to have convergent validity with some other measures of autonomy and decision-making (DHS data) but less association with autonomy on “daily tasks,” which tended to be high regardless of empowerment score. Psychometrics specific to the time sufficiency indicators were not discussed. The authors note that the “satisfaction with leisure time” indicator is subjective so for example women may be more satisfied because their expectations for leisure time have been adapted to their situation.

Complementary feeding studies to date cite the measure as developed by Alkire et al. 2013; however streamlined versions are available. These are available at the link above for downloading the WEAI.