IDEA Project: Randomised Evaluation of Women's Empowerment in Aquaculture, Northwest Bangladesh

WorldFish, part of CGIAR and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, ran the IDEA project ('Increasing Income, Diversifying Diets, and Empowering Women in Aquaculture') in the Rajshahi and Rangpur divisions of northwest Bangladesh from around 2018 to 2022, targeting smallholder fish-farming households in a high-poverty, high-undernutrition region.

The International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie), with the University of Greenwich and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, ran a three-arm randomised evaluation across 551 villages and 3,654 households, using the project-level Women's Empowerment in Fisheries Index (pro-WEFI) to measure intrinsic, instrumental and collective agency.

A companion baseline study of 1,653 households found real but uneven gains: 74% of women engaged in independent income-generating activity and 88% took part in decisions over that income, yet only 9% had adequate control over productive capital, only 4% had adequate access to financial services, and just 22% of respondents held equitable gender attitudes.

The final 3ie evaluation reported honestly that productivity and income gains were 'driven by broader market forces rather than the project itself,' that nutrition outcomes 'remained largely unchanged,' and that shifts in gender attitudes were 'neither linear nor uniformly progressive' -- a mix of progress and backlash. It stands as a well-evidenced example of a carefully designed empowerment intervention whose measured effects fell short of its ambitions.

Read the full analysis: https://www.3ieimpact.org/research/aquaculture-livelihoods-nutrition-and-womens-empowerment