Women's Participation in a Union

What: This indicator measures the percent of women in union and earning cash who report participation in decisions about the use of self-earned cash. Women in union are women who are either married or who have a partner. A woman is considered as earning cash if she has been engaged in the past 12 months, and if she has been paid partially or fully in cash. Women who have been paid in-kind are not counted. Why: In many contexts, women may be permitted to earn cash but do not have control over spending. In such instances, there is a need to promote women’s control over their income. Promoting joint decision-making about self-earned cash can foster greater female labor force participation, and oftentimes leads to improved food, nutrition and health outcomes for the whole household.

Method: Collect the following data by conducting individual survey interviews with a representative sample of male and female members of the population at risk. If you do not have the budget, you can conduct >=6 focus group discussions with community members who represent diverse groups (e.g. male, female, wealthy/poor, old/young) and ask them to estimate how the share of the group that they represent would answer.

Questions:

1. Note to the interviewer: Select the sex of the respondent
   1. Female/male
2. Have you engaged in any work over the past 12 months?
   1. Yes/No
3. What type of work have you engaged in?
   1. Daily agricultural work, daily non-agricultural work, selling products on the market, working in a business with a regular salary, participation in a cash-for-work project, others
4. How have you generally been paid for this work?
   1. In cash
   2. In cash and in-kind
   3. In-kind
   4. Not paid at all
5. Who usually decides how the money you earn is used?
   1. Yourself
   2. Wife/husband/partner
   3. Someone else
   4. You and your wife/husband/partner jointly
   5. You and someone else jointly

How to calculate:

1. A survey respondent counts towards this indicator if they are female, if they have engaged in work over the past 12 months, if the have been paid in cash or in cash and in-kind, and if they either decide about the use of cash themselves, or jointly with their husband/partner, or jointly with someone else
2. The indicator value is the number of women who have earned cash in the past 12 months and who participated in the decision about how to use it (numerator), divided by the number of women who have earned cash in the past 12 months (denominator).

What activities should the indicator be used for?

When: This indicator should be used in projects that either promote female empowerment at the household level, or that include household-level cash transfers or cash-for-work interventions.

Age: 15-19, 20-29, 30+