| Sumario: | What is the relationship between empowerment and capacities to cope with and adapt to climate-related shocks? Using the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (Pro-WEAI) alongside qualitative data from focus group discussions and interviews, the study adopts a mixed methods approach to provide both standardized measures and context-specific insights. Findings reveal women and men are similarly disempowered in this context. Inadequacy was observed across indicators of self-efficacy, autonomy in income, and control over use of income, with women having greater inadequacy in work balance and visiting important locations compared to men. Measures of empowerment varied only slightly by value chain, with persistent intra-household gender gaps. In relation to climate resilience, a statistically significant association was found between empowerment and whether survey participants changed their practices in response to climate shocks. Those who are empowered are less likely to change their practices, which may indicate greater absorptive capacity to cope with and buffer from immediate effects of shocks. Similar findings emerged for livestock keepers who grow tea and horticultural crops. Their diversified portfolio in a mixed crop-livestock system may serve as an internal cushion, reducing the urgency to change practices in the aftermath of a shock. Future research using longitudinal data and mixed methods approach would be important for a deeper understanding of the causal mechanisms linking empowerment and resilience.
|
|---|