Gender Equity in Development
Innovation in research to reduce gender bias in development
Overview
While climate change will likely prove enormously disruptive to our shared environment and global agricultural systems, the world’s poorest countries are the most vulnerable by far. They will need investments in development programs to spur the adoption of climate-sensitive agricultural practices that can adapt to unprecedented changes in weather, rainfall, and extreme heat events. Yet, aid organizations and domestic governments alike lack the information they need to efficiently invest in these programs and measure their impacts.
AidData is a pioneer in using new technologies, big data, and counterfactual research methods to better evaluate development programs. Over the last four years, we’ve mobilized nearly $8 million in funding for agriculture, climate, and environment-focused research, publishing over a dozen geospatial impact evaluations (GIEs) of programs around the world. Our interdisciplinary team has specialized expertise in GIS, survey methods, remote sensing, and machine learning, as well as substantive expertise in climate change, conservation, economic development, gender, land rights, local governance, and natural resource management.
Africa Power Consortium
Advancing women’s empowerment through research and policy
The Africa POWER Consortium brings together five leading organizations—AFIDEP, AidData, EconInsight, IDinsight, and Boston University's Global Development Policy Center. Each organization provides unique expertise to drive meaningful collaborative change.
Case Studies
Does sweet potato uptake spread through social networks?
We're bringing in surveys and satellite imagery to study how household impacts diverge by gender
Small-holder farmers, who cultivate 80% of farms and produce 90% of food in sub-Saharan Africa, are the most at risk from severe droughts, which have tripled in frequency since the 1970s. Helping these farmers switch to climate-resistant crops is of paramount importance. The prize-winning orange-fleshed sweet potato is one such crop: it adapts to droughts by actually increasing its levels of amino acids and beta-carotene, important nutrients that many in developing countries are deficient in. But mass adoption requires reaching both men and women across households and solving barriers to uptake.
AidData is currently evaluating two major sweet potato programs implemented by the International Potato Center (CIP). With generous funding from the Hewlett Foundation and William & Mary's Commonwealth Center for Energy and the Environment, we're studying how women and men's social networks and the selection of sweet potato educators based on gender and leadership level impacts the community's adoption of sweet potatoes in Ghana. In Ethiopia, we're working with CIP and the U.S. Agency for International Development to understand how a humanitarian assistance project that delivered sweet potato vines and potato seeds to farmers ultimately affected households.
Evaluating Gender Bias in AI Applications Using Survey Data in Ghana
Increasing transparency and accountability in global development AI
In partnership with CDD-Ghana, AidData has worked to evaluate the potential of gender bias in wealth estimates generated using artificial intelligence (AI), geospatial data, and USAID’s Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) data. The project leverages AidData’s expertise in artificial intelligence, geospatial data, household surveys, and CDD-Ghana’s knowledge of the local context and environments to produce a novel public good that will elevate equitability discussions surrounding the growing use of AI in development. Funded through USAID’s Equitable AI Challenge (and implemented through DAI’s Digital Frontiers agreement with USAID) this project approaches a critical problem: increase the accountability and transparency of AI systems used in global development contexts. The project builds upon AidData’s broader research initiative on gender equity in development, as well as ongoing AI applications.
Read more about Equitable AI.
Did dam-building projects bring different benefits depending on gender?
We're piloting a methodology to better disaggregate geospatial data by gender and correct for measurement error
Ghana struggles with widening regional inequality. Only 1.6% of its irrigable land is equipped with water management infrastructure, with the vast majority concentrated in the richer central and southern regions. Water stress due to changing rainfall patterns is making farming untenable in the north, leading to mass internal migration. To combat this, Ghana’s government launched the One Village, One Dam (1V1D) project, building a new, small-earth dam in every northern village. But did the program achieve its goals? And did the impacts change based on gender?
To answer this, AidData’s Gender Equity in Development Initiative partnered with the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) to under how outcomes of the 1V1D program differed between men and women, especially related to household dynamics like income hiding and household bargaining. Impact evaluations rely on models that assume measurement error in data is random—but if this error is systematically skewed by gender, the entire evaluation can be biased. With funding from the Hewlett Foundation and Innovations for Poverty Action, we worked to identify the measurement error in self-reported agricultural characteristics by collecting high-quality gender-disaggregated data. This pilot project and its innovative evaluation methodology is now being scaled with other regional partners in sub-Saharan Africa.
School-Related Gender Based Violence (SRGBV)
With support from the Government of Canada and USAID's Higher Education Solutions Network (HESN), and in partnership with Together for Girls and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, AidData conducted a secondary analysis of the Violence Against Children Surveys (VACS) data to identify the prevalence of SRGBV, as well as details on violence perpetration, victimization risk and post-violence behaviors in selected countries. This methodology can be used to understand the prevalence of physical and sexual SRGBV across all countries for which the VACS was conducted and has been used to inform policymakers, practitioners, and researchers for better violence prevention.
Cambodia's forests contain some of the most biologically diverse habitats in the world, but they have experienced dramatic deforestation over the past two decades, driven by expanding agriculture and infrastructure. China is now the largest funder of infrastructure in the developing world, providing more than $85 billion annually. In Cambodia, China’s state-owned banks have funded projects to build, rehabilitate, and upgrade over 3,000 km of major roadways over the last two decades.
As part of the first study to identify the effects of Chinese government-funded road investments on nearby forests and ecosystems in a developing country setting, AidData combined decades of satellite data on forest cover with a new dataset on the precise timing and location of Chinese-funded road projects. Unlike those financed by the World Bank, these projects were discovered to be disproportionately located in areas with more plantations and natural resource concessions. We found that the projects ultimately led to significant declines in forest cover, particularly in nearby plantations, where more than half of tree cover was lost. Forest loss was worst after construction was completed and appears to be driven by rubber plantations, mediated by shifts in global rubber prices. Published in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, the research has implications for policymakers as China’s overseas development finance continue to expand into new regions.
Blog: Chinese-funded infrastructure in endangered forests: What is the data telling us?
Featured Publications
Program Team
For technical or research inquires, contact:
For partnership and media inquiries, contact:
Alex Wooley
Director of Partnerships and Communications