Impact Report Series, Issue 11
Women’s and Youth Empowerment in Rural Tunisia - An assessment using the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI)
The “Women’s and Youth Empowerment in Rural Tunisia” study uses, for the first time in the Arab world, the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) to investigate the topic of gender equality. The study employs a large-scale survey of rural, semi-urban and urban Tunisia to map levels of empowerment among women and young people between the age of 18 and 30. The overall objective of the project is to provide new measurement tools and data to policymakers and organisations to allow them to better design, target, monitor and evaluate initiatives aiming to empower women and young people across Tunisia.
Tunisia is among the few Arab countries that have recently made significant changes in their constitutional, legislative and policy framework, to facilitate and promote gender equality and eliminate gender-based discrimination. Yet, encouraging as this may seem, there is a substantial discrepancy between what law is and what is practised, both in public and private life. One of the main reasons for this is the existence of strong and persistent gender based norms and attitudes.
We conducted a large-scale survey in rural, semi-urban and urban Tunisia to map levels of empowerment among women and young people between the age of 18 and 30. The overall objective of this project was to provide new measurement tools and data to policymakers and organisations to empower women and young people across Tunisia.
The WEAI-TN is a composite measurement tool, assessing the extent to which women can take control over critical parts of their life in the household, the community and the wider economy. We measure both absolute and relative levels of empowerment for women, where relative means relative to men. For our youth sample, we only compute absolute measures of empowerment for each relevant dimension.
We measure absolute levels of women empowerment across five domains (production, resources, income, leadership and time use). Each domain receives the same weight (1/5) and we have one or two indicators per domain (thus, in case of two indicators, each indicator receives a weight of 1/10).
The report shows that despite many legal achievements, Tunisia still has a long way to go when it comes to women’s and youths’ empowerment. The lack of decent formal jobs clearly contributes to these low levels of empowerment that we observe. The fact that traditional norms are strong and persistent points to a need to encourage equal participation that may help change female labour market participation and in the long run and also the social norms associated with it.
We conducted a large-scale survey in rural, semi-urban and urban Tunisia to map levels of empowerment among women and young people between the age of 18 and 30. The overall objective of this project was to provide new measurement tools and data to policymakers and organisations to empower women and young people across Tunisia.
The WEAI-TN is a composite measurement tool, assessing the extent to which women can take control over critical parts of their life in the household, the community and the wider economy. We measure both absolute and relative levels of empowerment for women, where relative means relative to men. For our youth sample, we only compute absolute measures of empowerment for each relevant dimension.
We measure absolute levels of women empowerment across five domains (production, resources, income, leadership and time use). Each domain receives the same weight (1/5) and we have one or two indicators per domain (thus, in case of two indicators, each indicator receives a weight of 1/10).
The report shows that despite many legal achievements, Tunisia still has a long way to go when it comes to women’s and youths’ empowerment. The lack of decent formal jobs clearly contributes to these low levels of empowerment that we observe. The fact that traditional norms are strong and persistent points to a need to encourage equal participation that may help change female labour market participation and in the long run and also the social norms associated with it.