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.

本研究针对坦桑尼亚一夫一妻制农业家庭中的女性赋权（women's empowerment），评估了一项通过引入参与式家庭内部决策（participatory intrahousehold decision making）以挑战传统性别关系的干预措施所产生的影响。本研究采用混合研究方法，考察该干预引发的各项变化，以及这些变化如何契合女性自身所珍视的赋权维度与赋权进程——这一研究视角充分涵盖了赋权本身所固有的主观属性。研究发现，认知提升型夫妻研讨班能够促进女性获取家畜资源，但未能提升她们的个人收入；而女性恰恰将自主决策家庭开支以惠及家庭视为个人收入的核心价值所在。针对参与式家庭内部决策的强化辅导，则提升了女性对家庭咖啡销售收入的掌控权——这正是女性所关注的核心议题之一。无论是夫妻研讨班还是强化辅导，均如女性所愿，提升了她们参与农场战略决策的程度。尽管从女性视角来看并非核心诉求，但夫妻研讨班仍有助于配偶双方更公平地分配生产性劳动与再生产性劳动。