Community mills and women's empowerment in Burkina Faso

Claudio Araujo (1) , Catherine Araujo-Bonjean (1) , Victor Beguerie (2, 1)

1 CERDI - Centre d'Études et de Recherches sur le Développement International
2 FERDI - Fondation pour les Etudes et Recherches sur le Développement International

The Multi-Functional Platforms program consists of setting up powered community mills managed by women in rural areas. By strengthening women’s capacities in areas traditionally reserved for men, the program places women at the core of local development and places emphasis on the empowerment of women. To assess the impact of community mills on women’s empowerment, which is by its very nature a non-observable variable with multiple dimensions, we propose an original operational framework based on Sen's capability theory. We argue that community mills participate in women’s empowerment by giving them more control over the decision-making process in all spheres of their life (agency freedom), and by expanding their capability set (well-being freedom). We use structural equation modeling to explore the relationship between these two unobservable latent variables, and to assess the impact of community mills. The database is taken from a survey of 2,400 women living in 200 villages in Burkina Faso. The results are consistent with a positive impact of the program on women’s empowerment. The results also confirm the validity of the approach for evaluating a potentially important, but hard-to-value, intangible outcome of a development program like individual empowerment.

Mots clés: Capability; Agency; Structural equation model; Burkina Faso.

Domaines: Economies et finances

Claudio Araujo, Catherine Araujo-Bonjean, Victor Beguerie. Community mills and women's empowerment in Burkina Faso. 2018. ⟨halshs-01958755⟩