Learning Talk: Evidence Review on Women’s Empowerment

On 30 March, the IEU held the Learning Talk on the Evidence Review on Women’s Empowerment.

This learning event introduced the IEU’s evidence review on the effectiveness of interventions that seek to promote women’s empowerment in developing countries. This evidence review showed that life skills training is a promising approach for supporting women’s empowerment in climate and agricultural projects.

First, the landscape of evidence was presented through an evidence gap map. An evidence gap map allows practitioners to improve project design by seeing where the evidence base is richest and learning from these studies. It also highlights evidence gaps where more knowledge is needed. The evidence gap map plots a variety of interventions across a range of intervention and outcome areas. 

Second, a systematic review on interventions that provided training to enhance life skills was presented to the audience. Life skills are defined as abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life. The systematic review aggregated across studies to measure whether these interventions increased self- and social empowerment and contributed to economic and political empowerment. The evidence review was completed alongside the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the Campbell Collaboration.