Development of a Tool to Measure Women’s Agency in India

Abstract

Ensuring and expanding women’s agency is an essential component of efforts to promote the rights and well-being of women. However, inadequate measurement hampers monitoring and research into achieving this goal. In this study, we developed a theory-based measurement tool of women’s agency. We developed a conceptual model of agency through a review of the literature, and then used this model to identify potential indicators of agency. These indicators were asked as part of a population-based household survey that was completed between July and November 2016 by 3042 women in rural Rajasthan, India. We tested the construct validity of the hypothesized measurement model using confirmatory factor analysis. We identified a conceptual model of agency, composed of 23 indicators, which measured the domains Household Decision-Making, Freedom of Movement, Participation in the Community, and Attitudes and Perceptions. This conceptual model fit the study data well (CFI = 0.974, TLI = 0.970, RMSEA = 0.031). Our results have implications for measurement efforts in a number of settings, and our tool can be used to measure women’s agency in rural India.

Keywords:

• Women’s agency
• Women’s empowerment
• Measurement tool
• India
• Sustainable development goals
• Autonomy

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Aniruddha (Bobby) Das for his feedback on an early draft of this manuscript. This work was carried out with financial support from the UK Government’s Department of International Development (DFID) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada. Robin Richardson was supported by the Spencer Foundation (#242794) and a fellowship from the Regroupement Stratégique Santé Mondiale du Réseau de Recherché en Santé des Populations du Québec. Arijit Nandi was supported by the Canada Research Chairs program. Sam Harper was partially supported by a Chercheur Boursier Junior 2 from the Fonds de la Recherche en Santé du Québec. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the funding agencies. On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Robin Richardson http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0182-455X

About the Author(s)

Robin Richardson is a post-doctoral fellow in the Psychiatric Epidemiology Training Program in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University. Her work investigates the effect of social and structural factors on population mental health in low- and middle-income countries.

Norbert Schmitz is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and an Associate Member in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Occupational Health at McGill University. He is a researcher at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute and a researcher at the Montreal Diabetes Research Center. His primary research interests include investigating links between well-being and diabetes, psychiatric epidemiology, and measurement of health status.

Sam Harper is an Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Occupational Health at McGill University. He is also a member of the McGill University Centre on Population Dynamics and the Montreal Health Equity Research Consortium. His research focuses on understanding population health and its social distribution, with specific interests in impact evaluation, measuring health inequalities, global health, demography, cancer epidemiology, causal inference, and ethical issues in public health.

Arijit Nandi is an Associate Professor jointly appointed at the Institute for Health and Social Policy and the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Occupational Health at McGill University. His work evaluates the impact of public policies and programs on population health. He holds a Canada Research Chair in the Political Economy of Global Health.

Notes

1 These internal and external qualities align with Sen’s concept of functionings, which include activities and states of being (Sen 1985b).

2 In other words, all reported responses are used to predict a response for the missing response. For example, if a woman is missing a response related to Freedom of Movement, her responses to other agency questions will be used to estimate a response to the missing question.

Additional information

Funding

This work was carried out with financial support from the UK Government’s Department of International Development (DFID) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada. Robin Richardson was supported by the Spencer Foundation (#242794) and a fellowship from the Regroupement Stratégique en Santé Mondiale du Réseau de Recherché en Santé des Populations du Québec. Arijit Nandi was supported by the Canada Research Chairs program. Sam Harper was partially supported by a Chercheur Boursier Junior 2 from the Fonds de la Recherche en Santé du Québec. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the funding agencies. On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.