Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized

in World bank projects

Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment
An Operational Approach to Enhancing
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Design: Jihane El Khoury Roederer

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper was written by Wendy Cunningham and Sarika

Gupta (Social Protection & Jobs Practice, Africa Region, World
Bank), with valuable feedback and input from Ioana Botea and
guidance from the Africa Social Protection & Jobs WGE SWAT
team (Emily Weedon, Sara Troiano, Benedicte de la Briere,
Christabel Dadzie, and Kehinde Ajayi), the Gender Innovation
Lab, the Africa Human Capital Plus Team, participants at the
decision meeting, and peer reviewers (Maria Beatriz Orlando,
Alessandra Heinemann, Kathleen Beegle, Aline Coudouel, Sara
Troiano, Tanya D’Lima, and Nono Ayivi-Guedehoussou), Social
Protection & Jobs Practice Managers (Iffath Sharif, Dhushyanth
Raju, Camilla Holmemo, Paolo Belli, Robert Chase, and
Christian Bodewig), and HD Regional Directors Dena Ringold
and Amit Dar. The paper is built on the analysis contained
in “Empowerment Approach: An Application to Women and
Girls.” Social Protection & Jobs Practice, Africa Region, World
Bank, mimeo authored by Audrey Stienon (consultant, World
Bank) with inputs from Lindsay Mossman (consultant).

Please cite as: Wendy Cunningham and Sarika Gupta (2023)

“An Operational Approach to Enhancing Women’s and Girls’
Empowerment in World Bank Operations,” Social Protection &
Jobs Practice, Africa Region, World Bank, mimeo

  | III
 Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS III
1 INTRODUCTION 2
2 TOWARD AN OPERATIONAL APPROACH TO WOMEN’S
AND GIRLS’ EMPOWERMENT (WGE) 5
3 APPLYING THE OPERATIONAL APPROACH TO WGE
THROUGH THE 3-DS: DEFINE, DIAGNOSE, DESIGN 13
4 A PRACTICAL EXAMPLE OF APPLYING THE APPROACH
TO A WORLD BANK OPERATION 16
5 CONCLUSION 19
REFERENCES 20
ANNEX 1: APPLICATION OF THE 3-DS TO INCORPORATE
WGE IN A WORLD BANK PROJECT 22
ANNEX 1. ENDNOTES 32

IV |
 1 Introduction
Gender equality has long been central to the World Bank’s twin goals of ending extreme poverty
and boosting shared prosperity in a sustainable manner. The World Bank’s Gender Strategy 2016-
2023 advocates for closing gender gaps in four domains: (i) human endowments; (ii) jobs; (iii) asset
ownership and control; and (iv) voice and agency.1 The “Gender Tag” was introduced in 2017 to identify
those projects that include a clear analysis of how to close gender gaps as well as specific monitoring
actions to achieve this. The share of “gender tagged” operations has been steadily increasing, from 50
percent in FY17 to 81 percent in FY21, which has exceeded the Bank’s IDA and capital increase targets.2

More recently, women’s and girls’ empowerment (WGE) has become a priority in the Africa region
in the context of the region’s demographic transition. The 2019 Africa Human Capital Plan (HCP)
identified the need to “accelerat[e] the demographic transition by empowering women and girls” as one
of seven gamechangers for advancing human capital development in the region.3 The HCP “commits to
supporting countries in accelerating the fertility transition by empowering, educating, employing, and
enhancing access to sexual and reproductive healthcare” for women and girls—or the 4Es framework.
The plan also sets an objective for the World Bank to have put in place cross-sectoral projects to support
women’s empowerment and the demographic transition in 20 African countries with high fertility rates
by 2023.4

There has been a proliferation of World Bank projects with development objectives that include
“empowerment”, yet there remains a lack of consensus around its definition and operationalization.
The World Bank has committed over US$6 billion in new operations in the Africa region that “champion
women and girls” since 2019.5 This includes sectoral projects that target girls and women along the
4Es framework. Yet an internal review of the Africa Social Protection and Jobs (SPJ) portfolio in October
2020, for example, found that one-third of social safety net projects reference women’s empowerment
as a goal but often fail to define what is meant by “empowerment” or how the project contributes to
achieving it.6 The Bank’s Strategy for Human Capital Development in Africa recognizes women’s and
girls’ empowerment as a policy goal in its own right,7 though at times it equates it with the demographic
transition. Thus, there is still no consensus on what “empowerment” consists of in the context of a
development operation, how projects can be designed to achieve it, or how to measure success.8

1 World Bank (2015).

2 World Bank (2022).
3 World Bank (2021).
4 More than four children per woman.
5 World Bank (2021).
6 World Bank (2021).
7 World Bank (2021).
8 The proliferation in the use of the “empowerment” concept may have diluted its meaning, to such an extent that “women’s empowerment” is often taken
as being synonymous with “gender equality” and “women’s status” (Calvès, 2009). This has led to criticism of development agencies’ empowerment
programs for being top-down rather than bottom-up (Calvès, 2009 and O’Neil, 2014).

2 | MEASUREMENT GUIDE: FOUR INDICATORS FOR ASSESSING WOMEN’S AND GIRLS’ EMPOWERMENT IN OPERATIONS
This note lays out a pragmatic Operational Approach to enhancing women’s and girls’ empowerment
in World Bank projects.9 It is not intended to provide a new definition of empowerment or to present
a new framework (see Box 1 for the key frameworks that guide the development community’s work on
WGE). Instead, the objective of the note is to translate widely accepted empowerment concepts into
an Operational Approach to WGE that Bank TTLs can use in their project and ASA work. The approach
includes: (i) a systematic way to analyze constraints to achieving WGE in the context of lending or
analytical products; (ii) a list of potential intervention areas within the three empowerment pillars that
can be integrated into World Bank projects; and (iii) guidance on how to incorporate the operational
approach to WGE into project design.

BOX 1. The Development Community’s Frameworks for Women’s Empowerment

There is a large amount of overlap in the key empowerment concepts that various organizations have identified as
being central to increasing women’s opportunities and improving their wellbeing.
The World Bank’s 2012 World Development Report on gender equality (World Bank, 2012) proposed a framework
related to women’s endowments (health, education, and assets), agency, and access to economic opportunities. The
framework was incorporated into the Bank’s 2014 Voice and Agency Report (World Bank 2014) as well as its 2016-
2023 Gender Strategy (World Bank, 2015). More recently, the 2019 Africa Human Capital Plan (World Bank, 2021) put
forward a “4Es” framework identifying empowerment, education, employment, and enhanced access to health services
as key elements for enhancing women’s and girls’ agency.
The UNDP includes empowerment as a component of its Gender Inequality Index, using education and representation
in decision-making bodies as indicators of “empowerment” and identifying reproductive health and labor force
participation as other indicators of gender equality.
The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) defines economic empowerment as being comprised of
two inter-related components: (i) economic advancement and (ii) power and agency, with the building blocks of this
being individual and community resources (including human, financial, social, and physical capital) and norms and
institutions (Golla et al, 2018).
International non-governmental organizations such as CARE International have focused their women’s
empowerment frameworks on the pillars of agency, power relations, and structures, including social norms and laws,
policies, and institutions (CARE International, 2016).
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Empowerment Model offers the following three elements of empowerment:
(i) the agency of women and girls; (ii) formal and informal institutional structures and norms; and (iii) access to
resources, including health, financial and productive assets, knowledge and skills, and time and social capital (van
Eerdewijk et al, 2017).

9  lthough not detailed in this note, this same approach can also be used to structure Advisory Services and Analytics (ASA) work related to gender,
A
especially gender gap assessments and diagnostics. See Cunningham et al. (2023b) for an example of how this has been done in Liberia.

Introduction | 3
 The intended audience for this note is World Bank task team leaders. The Operational Approach to
WGE is designed to make it easier for task team leaders (TTLs) to identify and categorize the constraints
that women and girls face when trying to achieve a desired outcome and include interventions into
project design that can effectively alleviate those constraints so that women are empowered to make
new decisions over their lives. The intention behind working towards women’s and girls’ empowerment
in a systematic way is to ensure that gender gaps are closed sustainably, by tackling the root of the
problem, rather than temporarily, by mechanically shifting outcomes in short-term projects. The ideas
in the approach are appliable to all regions and Global Practices.

Methodologically, the Operational Approach to WGE draws from two main documents that have been
heavily vetted as well as from World Bank experience. First, it takes principles proposed in Kabeer
(1999) as the conceptual basis for the definition of empowerment and its component parts. Kabeer
(1999) is widely recognized as a foundational text in the gender and development field. Second, we
draw operational guidance from a conceptual model that was meticulously developed by the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) through a thorough literature review and intensive dialogue with
development practitioners and feminist thinkers intersected with the BMGF’s operational experience.10
Drawing from these two sources, we emphasize the conceptual ideas that are most relevant to the
World Bank’s operational and analytical work.

The note is organized in four main sections. Following this introduction, Section 1 provides an overview
of the concept of “empowerment,” while Section 2 describes the factors that, collectively, result in
women’s empowerment. Section 3 then provides brief guidelines for how to use the Operational
Approach to WGE in World Bank operations in any thematic sector using the 3-Ds (define, diagnose, and
design). Section 4 provides a brief example of how to apply the Operational Approach in the context of
a World Bank project, with details in Annex 1. Section 5 summarizes the main messages and concludes.

10 S
 ee van Eerdewijk et al. (2017) for the full analysis and a summary at: https://prevention-collaborative.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/BMGF_2019_
Conceptual-Model-Women-and-Girls-Empowerment.pdf

4 | AN OPERATIONAL APPROACH TO ENHANCING WOMEN’S AND GIRLS’ EMPOWERMENT IN WORLD BANK PROJECTS
2 TWomen’s
oward an Operational Approach to
and Girls’ Empowerment (WGE)

The Operational Approach to WGE proposed in this note is based on the definition of empowerment
as expressed in Kabeer (1999) as a “process by which those who have been denied the ability to
make strategic choices acquire such an ability.” This definition is heavily rooted in Amartya Sen’s
Capabilities Approach,11 the goal of which is to grant individuals the capability to choose and pursue
the type of life that they prefer, such as the level of education they wish to attain, their choice of a
livelihood, whether or not to marry, or the number of children to have.12 Empowerment is thus a process
of expanding an individual’s ability to choose and act on those choices so that women and girls can
exert greater influence over their own lives and futures. Central to that process is for women and girls
to define their personal goals and determine the pathways needed to achieve them.

The ability to make a decision and to carry it out does not come solely from the decision-maker herself
but also from social structures that often inequitably distribute the power to make decisions and take
action. These structures may be institutions, markets, social norms, laws, allocation of resources, or a
myriad of other forces. People with high status and means often have more power to make decisions
that affect themselves than others with lower status and fewer means. In the context of gender, social
and economic structures often create systemic constraints that limit women’s and girls’ decision-making
power to pursue the type of life identified in Sen (1985). To equalize decision-making, the underlying
systematic constraints that are the root of unequal outcomes need to be tackled.

11 Sen (1985).
12 The capabilities approach involves expanding choice not only in terms of making decisions but also in terms of envisioning alternatives. This can be
particularly challenging when women and girls have internalized the taken-for-granted rules, norms, and customs within which their everyday life is
conducted (Kabeer, 1999).

Toward an Operational Approach to Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment (WGE) | 5

 BOX 2. What Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment is NOT
To gain a clearer understanding of women’s and girls’ empowerment, it can be useful to define what it is not.
Women’s and girls’ empowerment does not simply consist of targeting women and girls as beneficiaries. While
it is important to ensure that women and girls are benefitting from social programs, providing them with resources is
not equivalent to empowering them by enhancing their underlying capacity to make certain decisions over their life,
as defined by Kabeer. For example, since the emergence of social welfare policies in Latin America in the late 1990s,
projects have been providing household transfers directly to women, as research has shown this approach leads to better
outcomes, particularly related to household food security and children’s human capital. This is frequently described as
empowering women. However, increasing women’s access to resources, while desirable, does not necessarily change
intra-household or social power dynamics that affect women’s financial decision-making, unless coupled with other
inventions aimed at alleviating these constraints.

Women’s and girls’ empowerment is not simply a matter of reducing gender gaps or improving girls’ and
women’s sector-specific outcomes. Reducing gender gaps and empowering women and girls do not always coincide,
as it is possible to close a gender gap without empowering women/girls in the process of doing so. For example, a
program that provides a conditional cash transfer to families if they send their girls to school for an additional year
may help close a gender gap between boys and girls in educational attainment. However, this gap was not closed
by empowering girls to choose to stay in school longer, and the gap may reopen once the program funding ends.
Alternatively, by working with girls and families not only to provide the resources they need to send girls to school but
also to address mindsets around the value of girls education and ability of girls to set and articulate their educational
aspirations, the program could remove barriers to girls’ decision-making around their own education so that they can
proactively choose to stay in school longer, which may continue to be a choice they make beyond the lifetime of the
program. This would be an example in which girls have been empowered to close a gender gap. Similarly, improved
outcomes for women do not always translate in their broader empowerment in the absence of intentional interventions
to do so. For example, when women have participated in multifaceted economic inclusion interventions around the
world, this has led to well-documented increases in their households’ income, food security, and asset holding, but it
has not increased their own decision-making power (Banerjee et al, 2015).

Drawing from both Kabeer (1999) and BMGF (van Eerdewijk et al, 2017), the Operational Approach to
WGE is based on the premise that empowering women and girls requires a strategy that emphasizes
the three pillars—agency, resources, and context—that underpin a person’s decision-making
capacity. “Agency” refers to an individual’s capacity to set and articulate goals and take actions to pursue
those goals free of violence, retribution, or fear. “Resources” are the various means (such as capital,
assets, tools, and information) that individuals have at their disposal to facilitate their decision-making
and to enable them to take the actions towards the achievement of their goals. “Context” represents
the institutions and social arrangements that shape and influence the ability of individuals to use their
agency and assert control over resources (Figure 1).

6 | AN OPERATIONAL APPROACH TO ENHANCING WOMEN’S AND GIRLS’ EMPOWERMENT IN WORLD BANK PROJECTS
FIGURE 1. An Operational Approach to Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment

Achievements
(Examples: Increased educational attainment, higher wages, reduced fertility rates, elimination
of GBV, greater mobility, more leadership roles)

Agency Resources Context

1. Setting goals 4. Financial & physical capital 8. Formal/informal institutions
2. Sense of agency 5. Human capital 9. Statutory/customary laws
3. Mobilization to act on goals 6. Social capital 10. Customs and norms
7. Information 11. Relationships

Source: Author’s rendering.

Note: The three levels are the achievements (top), pillars (agency, resources, and context), and intervention areas (within each pillar).

Achievements are outcomes that are realized when the empowerment process has successfully
occurred.13 Using the Operational Approach to WGE within any specific sector implies the need to
first identify and then alleviate the constraints within each of the three empowerment pillars that limit
women’s and girls’ ability to realize their defined goal or “achievement” in that sector. These desired
achievements might be the closing a gender gap, an improvement in a particular outcome, or any other
change that improves the well-being of the target population.

From an operational point of view, an “achievement” is the outcome that a project team hopes to
realize by increasing women’s and girls’ empowerment. Projects in the Bank’s different sectors14 will
define achievements according to the challenges faced by women and girls in that particular sector. For
example, an education project may define its desired achievement as an improvement in girls’ learning
scores, while a transport project may define its desired achievement as an increase in women’s safety
while commuting.

Using the Operational Approach to WGE, projects are ideally designed to alleviate constraints
women face under all three empowerment pillars so that the desired achievements are realized
through a process by which women and/or girls have an enhanced ability to make choices and
act on those choices. Women and girls who develop the ability to define and pursue goals, have the
resources to work towards those goals, and can operate within an enabling environment to realize
those goals are empowered to reach their goals. Interventions that achieve their sectoral goals without
changing these underlying forces may temporarily benefit women or girls, but they are not likely to

13 K
 abeer (1999) puts achievements on equal footing as agency and resources, noting that they influence each other. From an operational perspective, we
conceive achievements as the results of transformations brought about by increasing WGE in terms of agency, resources, and (in our model) context.
14 The primary “sectors” in the World Bank are grouped into 16 Global Practices and 3 cross-cutting solutions groups.

Toward an Operational Approach to Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment (WGE) | 7

 truly empower them by changing their underlying decision-making capacity. For example, a project
may have the goal of increasing the age of mothers at the time of their first birth. If it simply were to
provide basic reproductive health training and contraception, it would loosen a resource constraint by
increasing access to contraception and thus might raise the age of mothers at the time of their first birth.
But these interventions would not necessarily be empowering women by changing their underlying
ability to make decisions around their fertility because they are not tackling agency constraints such
as the ability of women to define and act on their childbearing goals or contextual constraints such
as social norms related to family planning and household decision-making. Thus, when the resources
(contraceptives) stop coming, the age of first birth might go back down for the target population.
A project that reduces constraints under all three pillars, however, could give women the power to
proactively decide on the timing of their first birth and to make that decision a reality, and this shift in
underlying decision-making capacity would be more likely to last beyond the life of the project. From
a development practitioners’ perspective, the objective is to clear the way for women and girls to
make their own decisions (working from the bottom up) rather than being subject to the development
community’s decisions (working from the top down).

Under the Operational Approach to WGE, the three empowerment pillars have been categorized
into 11 potential intervention areas that TTLs can use to guide their identification of constraints
and design of their projects. The agency pillar has the following areas: (1) goal-setting; (2) a sense
of agency; and (3) mobilizing women and girls to take action towards their goals. The resources pillar
includes four elements that enhance the ability to exercise choice: (4) financial and physical capital; (5)
human capital; (6) social capital; and (7) information. The context pillar encompasses: (8) formal/informal
institutions; (9) statutory and customary laws; (10) customs and norms; and (11) personal relationships.
Constraints in each of these areas can impede women and girls from reaching their desired achievement.
Therefore, project teams can use the Operational Approach to WGE to identify and reduce those
constraints and to design interventions that will enable women and girls gain the capacity to reach
their defined achievements.

The following discussion describes the potential intervention areas under each WGE pillar in more
detail. It also demonstrates how interventions under the three empowerment pillars can be combined
in ways that increase women’s capacity to make and act on their own choices. It clarifies how some
concepts—such as human capital—can be part of one empowerment pillar within a project yet also
be a desired achievement for another project. In addition, it shows how issues that are commonly
incorporated into projects with WGE objectives—such as gender-based violence, childcare, and women’s
economic empowerment—are reflected in the Operational Approach to WGE. Box 3 highlights how
the Operational Approach to WGE differs from the approaches taken in Kabeer (1999) and BMGF (van
Eerdewijk et al, 2017).

8 | AN OPERATIONAL APPROACH TO ENHANCING WOMEN’S AND GIRLS’ EMPOWERMENT IN WORLD BANK PROJECTS
BOX 3. How Does the Operational Approach to WGE Differ from the Kabeer and BMGF Frameworks?
The WGE operational framework presented in this paper differs from previous work in a few fundamental ways:
1. Kabeer (1999) emphasizes three dimensions of choice or empowerment—resources, agency, and achievements
—which work simultaneously to affect each other and are indivisible. From an operational perspective, this
circularity is difficult to manage. Instead, we define an “achievement” as the development outcome to which we
expect the process of empowerment to lead. It is akin to a project “outcome.”
2. Kabeer (1999) assumes that structures, which we refer to as “context,” are external to the empowerment model,
shaping resources, agency, and achievements. While we acknowledge that context may affect the other pillars, it
also may directly affect achievements. From an operational perspective, World Bank tools to transform context
tend to differ from those that affect resources and agency. For example, development policy operations (DPOs)
may be more appropriate for shaping statutory laws on property ownership, while investment policy financing
(IPF) might be the best tool for building financial resources.
3. BMGF (van Eerdewijk et al, 2017) identifies additional elements within each of the three pillars, which may be more
aligned with the tools used by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation than those used in World Bank operations.
This is particularly noticeable in the resources pillar, where the World Bank focuses more on building capital,
while the BMGF considers a broader set of resources, including bodily integrity and critical consciousness.

Agency – the ability to make choices

The agency pillar reflects elements within the individual herself. If the manifestation of empowerment
is choice, agency represents individuals’ capacity to take the tools at their disposal and actively make
choices and take actions to achieve them. Thus, in order to increase the agency of women, it is first
necessary to help them to enhance the skills, knowledge, and confidence that they need to take
ownership of their choices and actions.

Although “agency” is often included in empowerment frameworks as a single concept, it is a complex

concept. Donale et al (2017) broke “agency” down into three critical dimensions, which correspond to
the intervention areas under the agency pillar presented in Figure 1:

1. Goal-setting is the ability of a girl or woman to envision and articulate an achievement. This is
a prerequisite for decision-making and, for very disempowered women and girls, a skill that needs
to be built. This can be done by project interventions that employ career counselors who work with
girls to help them to define their job aspirations. Alternatively, a project might include a financial
literacy program that works with women to help them to envision what they will buy when they meet
their savings goals.

2. A sense of agency is when individuals have the belief that they have the power to take the
actions needed to achieve their goals. Simply having a goal and the resources to reach it does
not necessarily lead to action if women and girls believe that their efforts will not achieve the goal.
Thus, it is also necessary to change their mindset so that they believe that their own actions can
lead to the results that they want. Projects aimed at building agency in women and girls might

Toward an Operational Approach to Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment (WGE) | 9

 include interventions that use mindset exercises or group sessions to build their self-efficacy and
self-esteem. These might be in the form of Agency-Based Empowerment (ABE) training,15 life skills
and resilience training, or psycho-social training, for example.

3. Mobilizing women to take action to reach their goals is the third element. An individual’s ability to
do this can be hindered if they have limited negotiation, leadership, or other skills that are required
to make change, especially if compounded by context and resource constraints. Some examples of
interventions that projects might use to help women and girls to take action might include providing
them with female role models or mentors that exemplify the desired actions or behaviors and thus
motivate them to follow suit. Other interventions might advocate for more women leaders in existing
institutions, sponsor girls’ clubs to provide peer-to-peer help and encouragement, or support local
women’s organizations in taking collective action to advocate for systemic changes that would
benefit women. Creating self-help groups can also be a useful way to mobilize girls and women to
take collective action and hold each other accountable.

While the term “agency” is often used interchangeably with “empowerment,” the Operational
Approach to WGE posits otherwise. It is important to recognize that empowerment requires not only
agency but also an enabling environment (context) as well as the means to realize choices (resources).
This is why the Operational Approach to WGE categorizes agency, context, and resources as equally
necessary preconditions for empowerment.

Resources – the means to realize your choices

The approach defines resources as the material, human, and social assets that enhance an
individual’s ability to exercise choice. Different types of capital can be useful for achieving an
individual’s goals, including financial and physical capital, human capital, social capital, and
information.16

4. Financial and physical capital consists of economic resources, such as income, savings, credit,
technology, land, equipment, livestock, roads, schools, health clinics, and other personal or
public assets. They hold value and thus infer decision-making power on those who own them,
have control over them, and/or have a right to use them. Some examples of project interventions
to reduce constraints to accessing financial and physical capital include providing cash transfers
to households, providing capital to women entrepreneurs, ensuring equal rights to own and use
land, and distributing mobile phones to women to enable them to access knowledge or financial
services. Interventions involving public assets might include investments that increase access to vital
infrastructure such as childcare centers, roads, or health clinics, which are all important resources
that affect the life choices available to women and girls.

15 Approaches that enable individuals to understand how their beliefs, values, emotions, and thoughts impact their behaviors and can be modulated.
16 The BMGF (van Eerdewijk et al, 2017) identifies additional categories under resources, including critical consciousness (which we put under agency), bodily
integrity (which we put under human resources), and safety and security (which we put under achievements).

10 | AN OPERATIONAL APPROACH TO ENHANCING WOMEN’S AND GIRLS’ EMPOWERMENT IN WORLD BANK PROJECTS
5. Human capital consists of the knowledge, skills, health, and other personal assets embodied
within the individual. Increasing the human capital of girls and women can position them to be less
dependent on others and to make better decisions in their daily lives. Some examples of project
interventions in this category might include the provision of technical and life skills training, education
services, health and reproductive services, and nutritional support, all of which have the potential to
build the human capital of women and girls.

6. Social capital consists of social networks and connections that form a support system within
which girls and women can collaborate and make choices. These connections are built on shared
experience and can provide women with information and support towards reaching their goals.
Some examples of project interventions for building women’s and girls’ social capital might include
the creation of girls’ clubs, professional cooperatives, or community councils.

7. Information about options, processes, opportunities, and services is a crucial input into decision-
making.17 How information is delivered and expressed affects the degree to which it is a viable
input to women’s empowerment. Some examples of project interventions in this area might include
holding information sessions at women’s health centers, posting flyers at places where women
gather, or supporting women leaders in conducting home visits to pass on information of interest
and use to other women.

Context – an enabling environment for equitable decision-making

Context interventions are those that create an environment that enables women and girls to make
choices.18 The most pertinent intervention areas for creating such an environment are those that relate
to formal and informal institutions, statutory and customary laws, customs and norms, and personal
relationships. Transforming context requires an engagement with those who perpetuate constraints to
achieving WGE rather than with women and girls themselves.

8. Formal and informal institutions are decision-making bodies that set the rules of the game.
This may include formal institutions such as governmental bodies that determine the allocation of
resources, the design of programs, budget priorities, and development strategies for the country.
Informal institutions, such as village councils or households, also take decisions that can negatively
affect the ability of women and girls to define their goals or take the steps to achieve them.
Interventions in this area should be designed to change those organizational structures that limit
women’s choices. This might mean addressing gender biases and discrimination by service providers
and employers or working with traditional community leaders to include women in decision-making
bodies at the local level.

9. Statutory and customary laws codify the rules of the game. They define who is allowed to make
decisions or how decision-making authority is distributed in the country. Statutory laws are passed

17 H uman capital (knowledge) and information are different concepts. Knowledge is awareness or understanding of a subject acquired from education or
experience. Information is specific practical data about the who, what, where, and when of a topic (but not the why or how).
18 Kabeer (1999) does not separate out context or institutions, instead lumping them in with “resources.” From an operational viewpoint, the distinction
between contextual and capital resources is significant so we separate the two, as is done by the BMGF (van Eerdewijk et al, 2017).

Toward an Operational Approach to Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment (WGE) | 11

 and enforced by formal institutions, while customary laws often emerge from years of practices. In
many contexts, statutory laws are not aligned with customary laws, but customary laws are more
often followed in practice. For example, statutory laws may allow women to own property, but
customary laws that dictate that men are the primary owners of marital property may be more widely
followed. Project interventions may aim to explicitly modify laws or they may aim to transform the
institutions that are responsible for upholding the statutory or customary laws.

10. Customs and norms are socially accepted ways of behaving that are not codified in law. Social
norms can be defined as behavioral rules that: (i) are developed and shared by a group that differs
from individually held beliefs or attitudes; (ii) are defined by an individual’s beliefs about what
others do (empirical expectations) and about what others think the individual should do (normative
expectations); (iii) are maintained by social influence, including positive or negative social sanctions;
and (iv) vary between different groups.19 Interventions designed to change social norms might
include working with influencers such as community or religious leaders to change expectations or
campaigns to raise awareness about alternative norms.

11. Relationships implicitly set the rules of the game between individuals, which might not be aligned
with other social or legal norms. For example, the decision-making structure in a household may
be influenced by social norms but also by factors specific to the household members. Also, the
composition of the community might affect its reaction to the idea of WGE, including resistance from
male heads of households and/or religious or community leaders. Some examples of interventions
aimed at reducing constraints to WGE within households or communities, particularly those involving
decision-making authority, might include working with family members to address their concerns
that may underpin their decision to limit women’s and girl’s decision making or supporting husband’s
clubs for men to discuss how they can play a role in alleviating constraints faced by women and
girls. Changing relationships in favor of empowering women and girls is linked to transforming social
norms as both are crucial to enabling women and girls to make and act on their own choices.

19 CARE International (2016).

12 | AN OPERATIONAL APPROACH TO ENHANCING WOMEN’S AND GIRLS’ EMPOWERMENT IN WORLD BANK PROJECTS
3 AThrough
pplying the Operational Approach to WGE
the 3-Ds: Define, Diagnose, Design

The Operational Approach to WGE consists of an analytical and operational structure through
which the World Bank can achieve the goals set out in its global and regional WGE strategies. These
strategies often define the “achievements” that the World Bank hopes to realize, and the Operational
Approach to WGE can be used to structure the interventions needed to achieve those goals. For
example, the World Bank’s Gender Strategy focuses on women’s economic empowerment (among other
topics), including the need to close the gender employment gap. Projects can facilitate this by requiring
that a predetermined share of beneficiaries to benefit from an employment program are women.20
Alternatively, using the Operational Approach to WGE, the project could introduce interventions that
reduce underlying constraints across the three pillars so that more women are empowered to take the
actions necessary to acquire jobs. While both approaches can close gender gaps, reducing constraints
and thus enhancing decision-making capacity is more likely to lead to sustainable change.

There are three key steps in applying the Operational Approach to WGE in World Bank operations.
We refer to these as the 3-Ds:

1. Define the desired achievement. The project team should start by working with local stakeholders
and the women and girls affected by the project to define the achievement they hope the project
will empower them to realize by enhancing their decision-making capacity. This ‘define’ step should
also be informed by available research and evidence on the challenges facing women and girls in
the sector. The final achievement identified might be a gender gap that needs to be closed or an
outcome for women or girls that needs to be improved. Instead of the project taking a top-down
approach and imposing a goal, involving women in this step can increase their ownership of the
agenda and help ensure the achievement is sustained beyond the life of the project.

2. Diagnose the constraints to realizing the achievement under each empowerment pillar. In this
step, the project team should compile an exhaustive list of the constraints faced by women and
girls under all three empowerment pillars in realizing the defined achievement. This step will likely
require desk and field research, and a key to compiling an accurate and comprehensive list will be
involving women and other stakeholders in the diagnostic process.

20 A project that successfully closes a gender gap does not necessarily empower women. There are examples of such projects from around the world, such
as state-mandated birth rate targets. Thus, the indicators for monitoring WGE must go beyond simply measuring gender gaps.

Applying the Operational Approach to WGE Through the 3-Ds: Define, Diagnose, Design  | 13
 3. Design project interventions under each empowerment pillar to alleviate the identified
constraints. To inform the design of specific interventions under each pillar, the team can start by
finding examples of interventions that have been successful in other settings to alleviate the kinds
of agency, resource, and context constraints they have identified in step 2. The team can work with
clients and other local stakeholders to adapt the interventions to the project setting as needed.
When the final determination of which interventions to include in the project has to be made, the
team will have to consider budget constraints, client preferences, implementation complexities, and
a host of other challenges. Therefore, while tackling all constraints identified in step 2 might be ideal,
the project team needs to decide which constraints are the most binding for women’s decision-
making in relation to the desired achievement and to devise interventions aimed at alleviating those
constraints, keeping in mind interventions that need to co-exist to have an impact. For example,
projects aiming to economically empower women need to recognize the importance of engaging
with and persuading male spouses (under the context pillar) of the need for women to maintain
control over their own earnings/transfers (under the resources pillar).

The eleven intervention areas outlined above can be used during the diagnose and design steps to
categorize the constraints under each pillar as well as to devise interventions to tackle them. There is a
growing number of detailed examples for project teams to draw on during the design step.21

The Operational Approach to WGE treats empowerment as an end in itself as well as a means to
reach a sector-specific end. The approach recognizes the intrinsic value of empowering girls and
women. It also envisions that empowerment, if focused on sectoral outcomes, is a means to sector-
specific ends. Both goals are achieved when using the empowerment approach to define, diagnose,
and design project interventions.

This approach can be used to incorporate empowerment into projects in any sector. The starting
point of the approach within any World Bank project is to define a sectoral goal that girls or women in
the given country wish to achieve. This achievement might have been defined in a country strategy, a
World Bank strategy, or by a government or it could be set after direct consultations with the women
or girls who will be affected by a project. The desired achievement may be to reduce gender-based
violence or to increase women’s access to household inputs (such as water or electricity). In the case
of girls, the goal might be to increase safety for girls when traveling to schools. Whatever the defined
achievement, a systematic analysis using the Operational Approach can then be undertaken to identify
the agency, resource, and context constraints that prevent women or girls from having the capacity
to make the choices and take the actions necessary to reach the chosen sectoral goals and to design
appropriate interventions to address those constraints.

The specific interventions under the agency, resources and context pillars will differ between
projects depending on the achievements that they choose. Teams working in various sectors (such
as health, education, water, agriculture, social development, transport, entrepreneurship, and social
protection) will manage projects that affect different domains of a women’s life. It follows that the types
of constraints that limit choice and action and the interventions required to overcome those constraints
will also differ between projects supported by different Bank sector teams. For example, they will be

21 See Cunningham et al. (2023a) and sources cited in Chang et al. (2020), J-PAL (2020), Buvinic and O’Donnell (2016).

14 | AN OPERATIONAL APPROACH TO ENHANCING WOMEN’S AND GIRLS’ EMPOWERMENT IN WORLD BANK PROJECTS
quite different in a project aiming to reduce the incidence of child marriage than in a project aiming to
enhance female representation on elected bodies.

The same concepts may play different roles depending on the defined achievement of a given
project. For example, an education project might make increasing girls’ secondary school attendance its
desired achievement, and one of its intervention areas might be reducing gender-based violence (GBV)
—which fits under the customs and norms intervention area in the context pillar—in schools. However,
a different project might choose reducing GBV as its desired achievement and identify increasing
female school attendance as a key (human capital) intervention under the resource pillar. Thus, girls’
education would be an achievement that results from empowerment process under one project but
a human capital resource investment in another. And reduced GBV would be a desired achievement
in one project but a context intervention to help empower girls to attain higher education in another.22

While interventions to alleviate the constraints faced by women under any single pillar might advance
women’s wellbeing, addressing constraints across all three pillars is more likely to empower women
and girls to make new choices that can enable them to realize a given achievement. Constraints under
different pillars are often interconnected. By not implementing interventions under all three pillars, a
project may find it difficult to realize its chosen achievement. However, the reality of project design and
implementation logistics may make it difficult to adopt a comprehensive approach. At a minimum, the
constraints analysis that precedes the project design phase should explore constraints under all three
pillars of the Operational Approach so that the project team can intentionally prioritize the constraints
and related interventions that are most important. In doing so, the team will also be fully aware of other
factors that are constraining women’s or girls’ empowerment and, thus, could potentially limit the full
realization of the beneficiaries’ goals and the project’s outcomes.

Given the multi-dimensionality of women’s and girls’ lives, it is not feasible for a stand-alone project
in any given country’s portfolio to be a catch-all “women’s empowerment” project. No single project
can empower women in all domains of their lives. A woman may be empowered to make new choices
in one area of her life (such as being enabled to pursue higher education by means of an education
project) but still not be fully empowered in another domain for her life (such as financial decision-making).
Therefore, it is more prudent for project teams to consider empowerment as the approach to be used
to reach a particular sectoral outcome, and to recognize that “empowerment” has happened in that
sector, than to make the general claim that the project is empowering women. The question, indeed,
must always be asked—empowering women to what end?

22 We identify GBV as a context intervention area rather than an agency area since a substantial literature attributes GBV to social norms and (power)
relationships.

Applying the Operational Approach to WGE Through the 3-Ds: Define, Diagnose, Design  | 15
 4 AApproach
Practical Example of Applying the
to a World Bank Operation

To illustrate the approach, we share an example of how it was applied it in the context of a World
Bank operation. The Recovery of Economic Activity for Liberian Informal Sector Employment (REALISE)
project’s objective is, among others, to increase access to income-earning opportunities for vulnerable
workers in the informal sector.23 Under one of the project’s components, this is to be achieved by
supporting vulnerable households to revive or start small businesses through the provision of business
grants and business management training. In addition, the task team followed the 3-D’s of the operational
approach to explicitly design elements under phase 2 of project implementation24 that would contribute
to empowering women to be more successful entrepreneurs.

First, the team defined the WGE Outcome to be achieved under the project: to increase the number
of women from the informal sector opening businesses in male-dominated, high-profit business
sectors. This outcome was determined based on lessons learned from the Youth Opportunities Project
(YOP) which preceded REALISE, analytical work on constraints to women’s small business development
and ownership in Liberia, including piloting of gender-focused interventions and focus group discussions
with female beneficiaries under YOP, and more general documents that explored Liberia’s labor market
context and gender-specific issues. The team also engaged with practitioners who had worked with
women entrepreneurs in Liberia for over a decade. These documents and the consultative process that
the team went through during preparation of the second phase of the REALISE project brought women’s
voices to the exercise. The team reviewed the project activities – which had already been agreed with
the client – and identified one that could host, and benefit from, WGE design elements: the initiative
to support women to open new small businesses. The team defined the desired WGE Achievement
to be “to empower women to open new businesses in male-dominated, high-profit business sectors,
with the aim of changing the status quo of women being concentrated in lower productivity and lower
income employment sectors of the economy.”

23 T
 he additional project objectives are to expand consumption smoothing support to poor and food insecure households and strengthen social protection
systems in Liberia. These will not be considered in this example, though they could easily be analyzed using the Operational Approach to WGE.
24 W
 hile it would have been ideal to use the 3-D’s to design the project’s components from the onset, this was not possible since the project preparation
preceded the development of the Operational Approach to WGE. Instead, the team used the Operational Approach ex post to integrate WGE into the
design features of at least one project component during its second phase of rollout.

16 | AN OPERATIONAL APPROACH TO ENHANCING WOMEN’S AND GIRLS’ EMPOWERMENT IN WORLD BANK PROJECTS
Second, the diagnosis phase required a deep dive to determine the constraints Liberian women
face in achieving the identified WGE Outcome. Drawing from three key sources: a country-specific
gender analysis, qualitative research on gender and occupational choice, and documents from similar
projects targeted to Liberian women and girls,25 the team identified the constraints Liberian women
face in achieving the defined outcome (i.e. crossing over into male-dominated sectors). Organizing
the analysis along the three WGE pillars, the team produced a list of agency, resource, and context
constraints that seemed the most relevant for preventing women to reach the WGE Outcome. Eight key
constraints were identified (details and the referenced sources are provided in Annex 1):

• Goal setting. Liberian women entrepreneurs seem less likely to “think big, long term, and take risks.”
(agency)
• Sense of Agency. Some Liberian women lack confidence in their abilities as entrepreneurs or in their
potential to enter male-dominated industries. (agency)
• Perceptions of what is possible. Liberian women have limited access to female role models in male-
dominated employment sectors. (agency)
• Asset ownership and access. Liberian women own fewer assets and have more difficulty than men
in accessing credit and formal financial services (resources)
• Human capital. Gender disparities in education and skills, particularly among working age adults, is
reflected in gender-differentiated labor market outcomes in Liberia. (resources)
• Customs and norms toward work. Cultural expectations, more so in some groups or areas of Liberia
than other, lead to the crowding of women into specific sectors and jobs, particularly those with low
returns. Perceived social norms around what businesses are appropriate for women seem to deter
women from entering certain industries. (context)
• Cultural norms toward sexual behavior. Sexual harassment and abuse are intertwined with work in
various spheres in Liberia. This includes pressure to perform sexual acts in exchange for employment
or access to means to be an entrepreneur, which is exacerbated in male-dominant occupations. The
norms and weak institutions to discourage such norms discourage women from pursuing certain
types of employment and constrain women’s occupational choice. (context)
• Cultural expectations. The general perception in Liberia is that women should be a household’s
primary caregiver and homemaker which limits their options in the labor market, including their
occupational choice. (context)

Third, the design phase required an exploration of program evidence and experience to recommend
interventions for addressing the identified constraints. Drawing from global knowledge and the
Liberian context, seven interventions to address the eight constraints were defined.

• Information (agency). To address constraints that prohibit women from “thinking big, long term, and
taking risks,” the project could provide information to project beneficiaries at the outset on earnings
opportunities in male-dominated sectors.
• Role models (agency). A second intervention to support women to think big, long term and take
risks would be to pair project beneficiaries with mentors who are successful female entrepreneurs
in male-dominated sectors.

25 T
 his includes the Youth Opportunities Project (https://projects.worldbank.org/en/projects-operations/project-detail/P146827 ) and the Girls Ebola Recovery
Livelihoods Support Operation (GERLS) (https://projects.worldbank.org/en/projects-operations/project-detail/P159493).

A Practical Example of Applying the Approach to a World Bank Operation | 17

 • Agency-based empowerment training (agency). To address women’s limited confidence in
themselves and their abilities as entrepreneurs, the project could incorporate agency-based
empowerment training into the business skills training through individual and interactive exercises.
• Small business grants (resources). To address women’s limited assets and their challenges in
accessing loans, the project could provide small grants to existing or potential entrepreneurs. (This
was already included in the original project design.)
• Business skills (resources). To address gender disparities in education/skills and help women
enhance their businesses, the project could provide training in a range of business-related skills.
(This was already included in the original project design.)
• Engage local influencers (context). To address the community norms and cultures that pressure
women to limit their occupational options, the project could engage local influencers to promote
social acceptance of women’s entrance into male-dominated sectors and help build alliances against
the norms that contribute towards public and work-place sexual harassment.
• Family coaching (context). To address household relationships that contribute towards crowding
women into specific sectors and jobs and limit their decision-making power about their occupational
choice, the project could offer gender-sensitive family coaching with male members of female
beneficiaries’ households. The intervention could be designed to raise awareness of the issues and
opportunities women face when selecting a male-dominated sector, alleviate fears, and address
normative gender beliefs related to women’s role in the household and in family decision-making.

This list, though long, is curated to align with the activities in the REALISE project, affect the WGE
Outcome to Achieve that was identified in the “define” phase, and be feasible in the Liberia context.
All recommendations are drawn from programs that have effectively addressed the defined constraints
in environments similar to Liberia. The proposed interventions areas do not map one-to-one to the
constraints identified in the “diagnose” phase. Instead, some interventions can address multiple
constraints. See Table 2 in Annex 1 for more detail on the proposed interventions.

To complete the design phase, the task team provided a systematic description of the design
elements and practical consideration for each of the seven interventions. The information was drawn
from the gender program evaluation literature (see Annex Table 2 for details). The assessment includes
a discussion of:

• Why? The rationale for the proposed intervention

• What? A brief description of the intervention design
• How? A discussion of how to implement the intervention
• When? The timing and phasing of intervention design, implementation, and results
• Next? Immediate next steps if the intervention is selected for the project
• Potential Partners? Other organizations that are operating similar interventions in the client country

The task team used project-specific filters to prioritize the seven interventions to then present to
the client’s implementation unit. For each intervention, the team considered the political feasibility
of introducing the intervention to the project, the extent to which it was compatible with the overall
program design, and the ease of implementation in the given institutional context. This priority list is
being used to guide the program design discussion with the clients.

18 | AN OPERATIONAL APPROACH TO ENHANCING WOMEN’S AND GIRLS’ EMPOWERMENT IN WORLD BANK PROJECTS
5 Conclusion
The Operational Approach to WGE aims to facilitate the realization of the World Bank’s global and
regional gender strategies by providing a simple methodology to identify potential interventions for
empowering girls and women to achieve well-defined goals. One way to realize the goals of these
strategies would be to take a top-down approach in which the client and the TTL would determine
what women and girls need and provide it to them through projects, often via interventions under the
resources pillar. However, the results may be more sustainable if the projects aimed to achieve their
goals by facilitating the process of women’s and girls’ empowerment. This would mean defining the
goals of the project in consultation with women and girls and designing interventions to alleviate the
context-, resource-, and agency-specific constraints that are preventing women and girls from making
decisions and acting on them to realize a specific achievement aligned with the project’s objectives.

By breaking down the empowerment concept into three pillars and applying the 3-Ds, Bank
teams can be more systematic in how they enhance women’s and girls’ empowerment through
their projects. The approach’s starting point is to define a desired achievement or “outcome,” as
presented in sectoral, regional, institutional, or client priorities that reflect the goals of women and girls
themselves. The diagnosis phase of the approach uses an organizational structure—context, agency,
and resources—that facilitates the development practitioner’s effort to identify the underlying factors
that are hindering women and girls from reaching the defined goal. This systematic approach maps out
the many constraints that need to be considered in project design, which will ideally include interventions
under all three empowerment pillars to enhance women’s decision-making capacity. This process can
be used by World Bank TTLs working in any sector.

If used successfully, the Operational Approach to WGE has the potential to empower women and
girls in two ways. First, the approach emphasizes the role played by a range of factors—encompassed
by the three pillars—in enabling women and girls to make and realize choices. Some of these factors
are directly related to the project beneficiary while others have indirect, yet significant, influences.
Second, by being achievement-oriented, the Operational Approach to WGE enhances the chance that
projects will enable women and girls to achieve their goals. In other words, by defining a sectoral goal,
and designing a project to enable the agency, resources, and context elements that are collectively
needed to achieve it, beneficiaries are more likely to become empowered to reach the defined goal. As
noted by the BMGF (van Eerdewijk et al, 2017), “[The role of development partners thus is] facilitating
a process of women and girls’ empowerment, and the interactions between the core elements, with
the aim of tackling systemic differences in the ability of women and girls to exercise choice and voice.”
World Bank TTLs can achieve this by ensuring that the three WGE pillars are reflected in the design
of their projects.

Conclusion | 19
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Conclusion | 21
 Annex 1: Application of the 3-Ds to
incorporate WGE in a World Bank project

The Recovery of Economic Activity for Liberian Informal Sector Employment (REALISE) project
utilized the 3-D’s of the Operational Approach to Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment to design the
second phase of implementation under project component 1. The project’s objective is to increase
access to income-earning opportunities for the vulnerable in the informal sector, expand consumption
smoothing support to poor and food insecure households, and strengthen social protection systems in
Liberia. The first component intends to support vulnerable households to revive or start small businesses
through26 the provision of business grants of up to US$900 per household, business management
training, and mentorship. The second phase of component 1 under REALISE intends to incorporate
additional interventions to empower women to cross-over into male-dominated sectors when opening
their small businesses.

Liberia is a challenging context for entrepreneurs, especially women. Employment in Liberia is largely
informal. Data from 2016 find that some 87 percent of all employment in Liberia is informal with 94 percent
of female workers compared to 79 percent of males participating in work that is not registered, regulated,
or protected by regulatory frameworks.27 Most informal work takes the form of self-employment in
agriculture or unregistered non-farm enterprises (NFE). The Government’s response to COVID-19 was
swift but its social protection measures were primarily focused on food distribution. Since women are
over-represented in low-profit, low-productivity sectors (such as wholesale and retail trade), they are
more vulnerable to shocks, and have been heavily affected by COVID-19. Liberia ranks 175th out of 189
countries on the UNDP’s Gender Inequality Index (UNDP, 2020).

Step I: Define the Achievement

The WGE Outcome to Achieve via the project is: Increase the number of women from the informal
sector opening new businesses in male dominated, high-profit business sectors. The team converged
on the outcome after considering the various project objectives, the Liberian context, experience of
the task teams (who have been working with women entrepreneurs for more than a decade), and the
lessons from the more general literature that a key barrier to profitability for women entrepreneurs has
to do with the choice of sector.

26 T
 he other two components aim to provide Temporary employment support and employability development for vulnerable workers, and to build capacity of
the project implementation and coordination units.
27 Liberia Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2016.

22 | AN OPERATIONAL APPROACH TO ENHANCING WOMEN’S AND GIRLS’ EMPOWERMENT IN WORLD BANK PROJECTS
Step II: Diagnose the Constraints

The eight fundamental constraints women face in opening businesses in male-dominated fields
are summarized under the three pillars of Empowerment in Table 1. The analysis is based on three
sources: a gender analysis, qualitative research on gender and occupational choice, and an analysis
of a pilot of behavioral and gender-focused interventions under Liberia’s Youth Opportunities Project.

Step III: Design the Project Components

Seven intervention recommendations that could be adopted under REALISE to address these
constraints are summarized in Table 2. Table 3 provides a more detailed description of and explanation
for why the interventions in Table 2 are proposed. Table 4 lays out the steps to follow to develop each
intervention and timeline.

Annex 1: Application of the 3-Ds to incorporate WGE in a World Bank project  | 23

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ANNEX TABLE 1. Constraints to Addressed for REALISE to Achieve its WGE Outcome, by Empowerment Pillar

CONTEXT CONSTRAINTS RESOURCES CONSTRAINTS AGENCY CONSTRAINTS

f Cultural expectations lead to the crowding of f Women tend to own fewer assets and have more f When setting goals, Liberian women
women into specific sectors and jobs, particularly difficulty accessing credit/formal financial entrepreneurs are less likely to “think big, long
those with low returns (NoVo Foundation et al, services, adversely affecting their entrepreneurial term, and take risks,” which is reflected in the
2019). Perceived social norms around what prospects. small and informal nature of their businesses (IFC,
businesses are appropriate for women can • A higher share of women than men responded 2014).
deter women from entering certain industries, “because I knew I couldn’t get a loan” as the f Some Liberian women lack confidence in their
particularly those that are typically male- main reason for not applying for loans in 2007 abilities as entrepreneurs or to enter male-
dominated and may require additional training and 2012 surveys (IFC, 2014). dominated industries (Ideas42, 2020; Gausman,
(Ideas42, 2020). • Women seek sources of finance that they 2021).
f Cultural norms around sexual behavior, perceive to be easier and safer (Ideas42, 2020). • “Mental models” exacerbate this as women
including pressure to perform sexual acts, • Women’s occupational choice is constrained stick to industries they feel they have the skills
and norms that control women’s sexuality by a lack of resources to pursue education for, avoiding those which are male-dominated
discourage women from pursuing certain types of and make financial investments in their small and may require additional training (Ideas 42,
employment and constrain women’s occupational business (Gausman, 2021). 2020).
choice (Gausman, 2021). Awareness of sexual • Women are discouraged when considering
f Gender disparities in education/skills reflected in
expectations in the workforce combined with men’s male-dominated industries to due self-
labor market outcomes.
desire to control women’s sexual behavior cause perceptions of “limitations in physical strength”
men to exert influence over the types of work • Only 45 percent of female youth compared to
65 percent of male youth were literate in 2016 and “lack of skills in these sectors” (Gausman,
women engage with (ibid). 2021).
(HIES, 2016).

MEASUREMENT GUIDE: FOUR INDICATORS FOR ASSESSING WOMEN’S AND GIRLS’ EMPOWERMENT IN OPERATIONS
f Cultural expectations that women should be a f Liberian women have limited access to female
household’s primary caregiver and homemaker • 28 percent of Liberian women v. 16 percent of
men in 2010 reported being unemployed due to role models in male-dominated employment
limits their options in the labor market (ibid). 41 sectors, making it difficult for them to make
percent of young women (ages 15 to 24) versus 11 lack of skills and experience (LISGIS, 2011).
decisions outside the box, while also expressing
percent of young men reported not engaging in the • Women rely on family members for financial
admiration for women who do challenge existing
labor force due to childcare responsibilities (Ruiz resources to pursue training goals, which limits
roles (Ideas42, 2020; Gausman, 2021).
and Elena, 2008). the skills they can access (Gausman, 2021).

A majority of women in the informal sector are not opening businesses in male dominated, high-profit business sectors.
 ANNEX TABLE 2. Recommendations for REALISE Interventions for Reducing Constraints to WGE under the Three Pillars of Empowerment

INTERVENTIONS FOR REDUCING CONTEXT INTERVENTIONS FOR REDUCING RESOURCE INTERVENTIONS FO REDUCING AGENCY
CONSTRAINTS CONSTRAINTS CONSTRAINTS

f To address the norms and culture (community) f As endorsed by international evidence, the design f To address Agency (goal setting, mobilization)
that contribute towards expectations and crowding of REALISE Component 1 follows an Operational constraints that prohibit women to “think big, long
of women into specific sectors and jobs and Approach to WGE, where Resource interventions term, and take risks” it is recommended that the
the perpetuation of sexual harassment, it is are paired with Agency interventions: REALISE team:
recommended that REALISE: • Provide business skills training to address • Provide information at outset to program
• Engage local influencers1 to promote social gender disparities in education/skills and help participants on earnings opportunities in male-
acceptance of women’s entrance into male- women enhance their businesses dominated sectors and guaranteed resources
dominated sectors and help build alliances • Provide small business grants to address they will receive (grants/training) from the
against the norms that contribute towards women’s limited assets and their challenges in program.3
public and work-place sexual harassment (refer accessing loans. • Pair women with role-model mentors4 who
to endnotes for resources). can respond to questions about the risks and
f To address the relationships (household) that rewards of different sectors.5
contribute towards (i) cultural expectations of f To address Agency (sense of agency) constraints
women crowding into specific sectors and jobs; that limit women’s confidence in themselves and
and (ii) limit women’s ability to make decisions their abilities as entrepreneurs, it is recommended
about their occupational choice it is recommended that REALISE:
that REALISE: • Incorporate agency-based empowerment
• Conduct gender-sensitive family coaching2 training into the business skills training
with male members of female beneficiaries’ through individual and interactive exercises
households to raise awareness of the context- (refer to endnotes for resources).6
specific issues and opportunities women face
when selecting a male-dominated sector,
alleviate fears, and address normative gender
beliefs related to family violence and women’s
role in family decision making.

Increase in the number of women from the informal sector opening new businesses in male dominated high-profit business sectors.

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ANNEX TABLE 3. Context and Agency Intervention Details

INTERVENTION WHY? WHAT? HOW? WHEN? PROPOSED CURRENTLY

(DURATION) IMMEDIATE NEXT WORKING ON
STEPS THIS?

Engage Local Working with One approach has REALISE could Initial engagement Conduct a rapid Episcopal Relief
Influencers religious and been to support identify influencers should occur prior stakeholder & Development in
traditional leaders influencers to relevant to the to the launch of analysis of key partnership with
(“influencers”) is carry out regular communities the Resources influencers in target Islamic Relief USA
critical to changing and sustained that prospective interventions neighborhoods/ (Liberia)
social norms. Both campaigns around beneficiaries work (grants, training). market areas (i.e.,
groups embody local common messaging and live in. The The scheduling FGDs with potential Tearfund (Liberia)
moral values, have (eg: supporting identified influencers of messaging beneficiaries, key
United Methodist
legitimacy and the women engaging would (i) be brought should ultimately informant interviews
Church – Family
respect that NGOs in male dominated together to review be determined by with local NGO
Planning, Women’s
and Government trades, addressing project objectives stakeholders, but a staff or political
Rights (Liberia)
may not; they also sexual harassment and brainstorm potential schedule representatives).
have extensive in public places) common messages may look like: regular Identify a budget
communication via their regular and complementary engagement parallel for: (i) training/
channels to the communications approaches; to programming brainstorming
communities where channels (i.e., (ii) develop a work- throughout (i.e., activity and at least
women live and work. sermons, Friday plan for campaign mainstreamed one review session,
prayers, routine delivery; and (iii) messages every (ii) stipends for
Depending on the community meet during project second Friday or stakeholder travel,

MEASUREMENT GUIDE: FOUR INDICATORS FOR ASSESSING WOMEN’S AND GIRLS’ EMPOWERMENT IN OPERATIONS
pre-existing level of engagement) and milestones (i.e., after Sunday) with mixed and (iii) budget lines
engagement, it can be mixed media (i.e., the first cohort) to media campaigns for mixed media
quite low cost. radio, social media review the messages occurring on a campaigns that can
channels). and exchange best monthly or quarterly be programmed by
practices and lessons basis. stakeholders.
(Refer to endnotes for learned.
additional suggestions
and resources).
 Continued
INTERVENTION WHY? WHAT? HOW? WHEN? PROPOSED CURRENTLY
(DURATION) IMMEDIATE NEXT WORKING ON
STEPS THIS?
Conduct Gender- Addressing One low-cost Sessions would Sessions should Identify/recruit Concern Worldwide
Sensitive Family household/family recommendation address the key be brief (two to a local NGOs in partnership with
Coaching relations is critical is family coaching, norms-based issues three sessions, or women’s Sonke Gender Justice
for transforming the which can be identified (i.e., one to two hours organizations already (Liberia)
Relations social norms that may conducted in a one- supporting women maximum), spaced in engaged in behaviour
impact a woman’s on-one basis (within engaging in male a logical way across change activities Tearfund (Liberia)
Option A ability to make the household) or in dominated trades) implementation at the household
Promundo and
choices about her small groupings of and address/answer activities (i.e., prior level to develop a
Worldfish with
livelihood. Engaging families and covers questions that may to grant, mid-way participatory family
Concern Worldwide
family members can common messaging impact a woman’s through training, and coaching toolkit to
(Liberia)
shift household’s around norms, while role in family- prior to first meeting pilot, and roll-out.
reinforcement of also providing non- decision-making (i.e., with role-models). International Rescue
gender or social financial incentives wife’s/daughter’s Identify a budget for:
Committee with
norms, increase for support, and contribution to Messaging should (i) recruitment of
consultation from
women’s ability to an opportunity to household economy; be aligned with training partner to
Men’s Resources
control future income, respond to questions how the family can campaigns developed design and conduct
International (Liberia)
and address hesitancy and concerns. support her future by local influencers. sessions; and (ii)
or concerns about Role-playing and/ career/business). materials or other Brighter Initiatives
women’s participation or participatory costs that may for Revitalization
in intervention activities are accompany training. & Development as
activities. encouraged. part of the MenCare
Campaign coordinated
by Promundo and
Sonke Gender Justice
(Liberia)

Annex 1: Application of the 3-Ds to incorporate WGE in a World Bank project  |

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Continued
INTERVENTION WHY? WHAT? HOW? WHEN? PROPOSED CURRENTLY
(DURATION) IMMEDIATE NEXT WORKING ON
STEPS THIS?
Gender Prolonged, guided Interventions target A gender Effective gender Identify/recruit a
Transformative behavior-focused small groups of transformative transformative local NGOs or gender
Male Engagement dialogues aimed men and take them male engagement male engagement equality organization
(Promundo to change men’s through a process curriculum, such as strategies require already engaged
Curriculum) knowledge, attitudes, of discussing Promundo’s Program 12 to 15- monthly in behavior change
or behaviors can be attitudes toward H or SILC-GTA, facilitated group activities or male
7
an effective approach gender equality can be adapted dialogues of 1 to engagement at the
Relations for gaining men’s and understanding for the Liberia 3 hours in length, household level to
Option B support for women’s of gender equality context. Because with subsequent adapt a gender-
empowerment, as a “win-win” for of the challenging homework transformative
increased agency, all (women, men, nature of facilitating assignments (i.e., toolkit. Ideally, the
and reducing boys, and girls) group dynamics on “What are one or two organization or
violence against by deconstructing these topics in a things you can do training partner is
women. Gender- harmful gender way that promotes differently to share familiar with using a
transformative norms. They can personal reflection, responsibilities Promundo curriculum
male engagement create a safe space/ respectful dialogue, more equitably in in the Liberian
strategies can be an set number of and attitudinal and the home? Do it this context.
effective intervention sessions where behavioral change, month and report
for shifting Norms women and men come facilitators should be back to the group next Identify a budget for:
and Culture and together as a group rigorously trained and meeting.”) (i) recruitment of
training partner to

MEASUREMENT GUIDE: FOUR INDICATORS FOR ASSESSING WOMEN’S AND GIRLS’ EMPOWERMENT IN OPERATIONS
Relationships and can and discuss their day- supervised.
be used for to target to-day challenges and REALISE should adapt, design, pilot,
men at community, or opportunities from For maximum impact identify how to and conduct sessions;
household level. their own gender’s on the WGE outcome, host sessions in and (ii) any materials
perspective. The REALISE should parallel to other or refreshments
guiding principle is target male partners interventions, such as that may accompany
that to achieve gender or siblings of target mentorship sessions. 12 to 15-facilitated
equality, men must be beneficiaries. For example, The group trainings for
a part of the solution, SILC-GTA, arranges the target number of
and that men are meetings in parallel engagement men.
often harmed by the with savings’ group
masculine norms they meetings.
carry.
 Continued
INTERVENTION WHY? WHAT? HOW? WHEN? PROPOSED CURRENTLY
(DURATION) IMMEDIATE NEXT WORKING ON
STEPS THIS?
Provide Information Allows women to To contribute For example, prior This should be done Develop content and N/A
align their future towards goal setting to committing to prior to women identify role-models
goals and ambitions and agency, it is a sector, grant, or committing to any which can cover key
with outcomes that recommended that training series, sector, or training. questions women
are feasible in the beneficiaries are participants could be may have for specific
market. Also allows provided with as invited to a day-long sectors, such as (i)
women to understand much information as “fair,” or “showcase” training required
resources that possible in advance. where information is (& how it will be
are available and provided on different provided); (ii) start-up
processes to acquire sectors, and women costs (& what will
resources they may can meet role-models be provided); (iii)
need. and mentors for a earning potential; or
Q&A. (iv) drawbacks.
Pair with Role- Interventions that One recommended For example, future Introductions would Identify role-model/ International Rescue
Models/Mentors foster support for approach for helping mentors could assist ideally occur both mentors who can Committee as part
women to network, women overcome with providing prior and after aid a small group of the Girl Empower
organize collectively, “mental models” of information for training to answer of beneficiaries project (Liberia)
or engage with the sectors they can/ future trainings. questions and help throughout and after
strong relevant role should work in and Ideally, they would them navigate their training.
models contributes “think big, take big be able to develop obstacles, especially
towards “collective risks” is to pair them a relationship with within the first few
Agency,” which with role-model/ beneficiaries during months of navigating
enables the building mentors from their and immediately a new sector.
of knowledge, skills, potential/actual after the training and
aspirations, and future sectors. be provided with a (Refer to endnotes for
confidence among a schedule for either resources on effective
group of women or visiting women at mentorship programs).
girls. their new business
or for small-group
mentorship sessions.

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Continued
INTERVENTION WHY? WHAT? HOW? WHEN? PROPOSED CURRENTLY
(DURATION) IMMEDIATE NEXT WORKING ON
STEPS THIS?
Deliver Agency- Vocational/business Agency-based REALISE could One example of Adapt the toolkit from Medica mondiale
Based Empowerment programs that empowerment identify gender- agency-based Kenya to the Liberian in partnership with
Training include a stand- trainings coach responsive trainers empowerment context to meet the ActionAid (Liberia)
alone psychological, participants to familiar with agency- training builds upon needs of REALISE
or agency-related examine aspects based trainings to a four-day workshop project beneficiaries Visoneria network
modules have of their emotions, contextualize and developed by the and identify potential – contributor to
consistent impacts on relationships, health/ deliver the training Empowerment female facilitators the Empowered
women’s self-efficacy body, confidence with to the women Institute and can who can deliver the Entrepreneur Trainer
money and income, beneficiaries. be customized for training. Handbook (Global)
and work to “unlock different schedules.
(Refer to endnotes for a Training should Organization
the power within”
toolkit for agency-based take place early in for Women’s
through a guided set
trainings for clean cook the cohort cycle Empowerment (local
of group activities.
stove entrepreneurs) CSO) as a part of Girls
with at least one
Not Brides (Liberia)
or two small group
check-ins, perhaps
with mentors, to
discuss progress
against individual
and business goals

MEASUREMENT GUIDE: FOUR INDICATORS FOR ASSESSING WOMEN’S AND GIRLS’ EMPOWERMENT IN OPERATIONS
developed as
“assignments” during
the training.
 ANNEX TABLE 4. Context and Agency Intervention Scheduling and Budgeting Example

INTERVENTION STEP COST DRIVERS TO CONSIDER MONTH WHEN ACTION

SHOULD TAKE PLACE
Engage Local Rapid Stakeholder Analysis Consultant (15-20 days), enumerators (3-4; for 5-8 days, including training), travel 1-2
Influencers expenses/refreshments for enumerators, and beneficiaries (assume 8-10 per focus group).
Orientation and Brainstorming Trainer fee to facilitate if in-house/partner facilitator unavailable. Honoraria, travel, and 3
Session with Influencers refreshments for 4-6 influencers for a three-day workshop; venue rental and stationary costs.
Ongoing messaging via Monthly honoraria/stipend in exchange for delivering of messages (depending on local 4-18
traditional communication policies).
channels
Mixed media campaigns Micro-grants per influencer groups to host 1-2 simultaneous campaigns bi-monthly or Starting week 5, every other
quarterly. Budget will determine scale and type. week through week 17
Stakeholder group review Honoraria, travel, and refreshments for 4-6 influencers for a three-day workshop; venue Week 15
rental and stationary costs.
Pair with Role Identify Role Models / N/A (HR time to identify, interview, and sign terms of reference) 3-4
Models/ Mentors Mentors
Role Models / Mentors visit Honoraria, travel, and refreshments to attend information sessions, at least one training 5, every other week during
beneficiaries session, and do bi-monthly check-ins with 3-6 beneficiaries. 6-16
Provide Information sessions with Venue rental (2-3 days if multiple in-takes of potential beneficiaries), honoraria, travel, 5
Information beneficiaries and mentors and refreshments for role-models. Print materials with key information (development,
printing).
Provide business Included for milestone purposes. 6
skills
Provide small Included for milestone purposes. 7-18
business grants
Gender-Sensitive Training Partner Identification Training partner sub-contract to cover development, piloting, and training throughout 1-5
Family Coaching and Tool Development intervention (level of effort, travel, materials).
Family Coaching Roll-Out with Refreshments and materials for household sessions (assume 2-3, spaced out). 6, 10, 16
Beneficiary Families
Agency-Based Training Partner Identification Training partner sub-contract to cover development, piloting, and training throughout 1-5
Empowerment and Tool Development intervention (level of effort, travel, materials).
Training Training held with Refreshments and materials for training sessions (assume 5 days); venue rental, if 6
beneficiaries different from business skills training venue.

Annex 1: Application of the 3-Ds to incorporate WGE in a World Bank project  |

31
 Annex 1. Endnotes

1 Guidance Notes: DFID’s “Shifting Norms to Tackle Violence Against Women and Girls” and CARE International’s
Engaging Religious Leaders in Gender Transformative Work: Faith and Masculinities. Case Studies of application:
Plan International & Promundo’s “Engaging Religious Leaders in Reducing Maternal and Child Mortality, and
Gender Equality” and Impact Evaluation of Community Led Alternative Rite of Passage (CLARP) model to
eradicate female genital mutilation/cutting in Kajiado County, Kenya.

2 Examples of effective application: An Integrated Approach to Increasing Women’s Empowerment Status and
Reducing Domestic Violence: Results of a Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial in a West African Country and
Understanding the Impact of a Microfinance-Based Intervention on Women’s Empowerment and the Reduction
of Intimate Partner Violence in South Africa.

3 This exposure to new choices – alongside with the promise of necessary resources—will contribute towards
generalized self-efficacy (GSE), an important part of the process in women unlocking their own agency. Study:
http://barrett.dyson.cornell.edu/NEUDC/paper_571.pdf

4 While focused on role-models for adolescent girls, this toolkit from population council provides useful strategies
and tips for sustainability of mentorship models: Making the Most of Mentors: Recruitment, Training, and Support
of Mentors for Adolescent Girl Programming

5 While focused on role-models for adolescent girls, this toolkit from Population Council provides useful strategies
and tips for sustainability of mentorship models: Making the Most of Mentors: Recruitment, Training, and Support
of Mentors for Adolescent Girl Programming

6 Example of effective application: Agency-Based Empowerment Training Enhances Sales Capacity of Female
Energy Entrepreneurs in Kenya and a sample Toolkit: Empowered Entrepreneur Training Handbook

7 The Savings and Internal Lending Communities Plus Gender-Transformative Approach (Promundo) See also:
Program P – A Manual for Engaging Men in Father-hood, Caregiving, Maternal and Child Health, Role of
Facilitation in Gender-Transformative Programs that Engage Men and Boys (Promundo, Plan), and Recruitment
and Retention of Male Participants in Gender-Transformative Pro-grams (Promundo, Plan).

32 | MEASUREMENT GUIDE: FOUR INDICATORS FOR ASSESSING WOMEN’S AND GIRLS’ EMPOWERMENT IN OPERATIONS