Economic Analysis of Women Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), a Comparative Study between some Egyptian Regions

This paper aims to analyze Women Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) for 3 simple random samples of beneficiaries utilized from agricultural development projects: MARSDEV in Matrouh, North coast of Egypt region, and WEE in Sohag and Aswan, South of Upper Egypt region through (1) calculating (WEAI) and its sub-indices : 5DE( 5 dimensions of empowerment: Production , resources, income control, leadership and time) and GPI (gender parity index) , monitoring changes between 2017 (project terminal) and 2022 (current situation), and highlighting  differences of (WEAI) between regions, (2) econometric estimating of the impact of socioeconomic characteristics on the latent variable “women empowerment status” by Multiple Indicator Multiple Causes (MIMIC) model in 2022.The results explains that the majority of disempowered women are young, illiterate, and low income. The poorest situation of WEAI is in the North Coast, as WEAI score in 2017 is only 26.6%, depicts irrelevant accomplishments in 5DE and GPI. In 2022, WEAI scores improve in all samples due to agricultural development projects. MIMIC model results prove that age is the only exogenous variable affecting women’s empowerment as power source in extended Bedouin households in North coast, while age, education, and income have significant collective impact on empowerment in South of Upper Egypt. It also displays that as empowerment changes by one SD, all indicators change directly by one SD except workload change inversely. Recommendations are: give more priority for women empowerment in North Coast of Egypt and to implement national observatory to provide annual WEAI status.