Empowering women in their households: A mixed methods analysis of a field experiment in rural Tanzania

This study assesses the impact of an intervention that challenges gender relations by introducing participatory intrahousehold decision making on women’s empowerment in monogamous agricultural households in Tanzania. With mixed methods approach, it assesses changes caused by the intervention and the way these fit into women’s own valued aspects and processes of empowerment, by which the study embraces the inherently subjective dimensions of empowerment. Awareness-raising couple seminars are found to catalyse women’s access to livestock, but not to personal income while women value this for independent decision making about expenditures for the benefit of their households. Intensive coaching in participatory intrahousehold decision making increased their control over household coffee income, a priority for women. Both couple seminars and intensive coaching increased women’s involvement in strategic farm decisions, as women wished. While not a priority from women’s perspectives, couple seminars contributed to a fairer division of productive and reproductive labour among spouses.