Women’s empowerment and Savings Groups: Monitoring and results measurement toolkit

The 'Women’s empowerment and Savings Groups: Monitoring and results measurement toolkit' provides a comprehensive framework for measuring women's empowerment across seven domains: economic independence, decision-making, confidence and self-worth, voice and leadership, time use, mobility, and health. It argues that while Savings Groups alone improve economic independence and self-worth, integrating economic development activities or gender-transformative programming is necessary to achieve broader social changes, such as shifting gender norms and reducing gender-based violence. The toolkit emphasizes the use of Theories of Change, a mix of quantitative and qualitative indicators, and data segmentation to account for the diversity of women's experiences.

• Integrating other economic development activities (such as vocational training or financial education) with Savings Groups expands outcomes to include improved technical skills, enhanced decision-making influence, and expanded access to market and social networks.
• The most transformative changes occur when Savings Groups are combined with integrated gender programming, which can lead to shifts in gender norms, decreased incidence of intimate partner violence (IPV) and gender-based violence (GBV), and more equitable allocation of unpaid household labor.
• Measuring women's empowerment is challenging due to a lack of consistent indicators, particularly in non-economic domains; the toolkit recommends a mix of standardized indicators for comparability and customized indicators for contextual nuance.
• Effective monitoring of empowerment requires a combination of quantitative tools (like surveys) and qualitative tools (such as social vignettes, role plays, and focus group discussions) to capture a holistic account of change.
• Data segmentation is critical because women are not a homogeneous group; the toolkit suggests disaggregating data by parameters such as age, location, marital status, and lifecycle stage to identify specific risks and drivers of empowerment.

APA

Rickard, K., Anderson, C. L., Chidiac, S., de Hoop, T., Gammage, S., Howlett, M., Majara, G., Massu, M., Meyers, L., Zahid, I., Meysonnat, A., Panetta, D., Peterman, A., Sidhu, A., Tungaraza, S., Walcott, R., & Wheaton, A. (2019). Women’s empowerment and Savings Groups: Monitoring and results measurement toolkit. FSD Africa. https://fsdafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/SEEP_SG-Womens-Empowerment_MRM-Toolkit.pdf

Chicago

Rickard, Katherine, C. Leigh Anderson, Sybil Chidiac, Thomas de Hoop, Sarah Gammage, Melissa Howlett, Grace Majara, et al. Women’s empowerment and Savings Groups: Monitoring and results measurement toolkit. FSD Africa, 2019. https://fsdafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/SEEP_SG-Womens-Empowerment_MRM-Toolkit.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Rickard |first1=Katherine |last2=Anderson |first2=C. Leigh |last3=Chidiac |first3=Sybil |last4=de Hoop |first4=Thomas |last5=Gammage |first5=Sarah |last6=Howlett |first6=Melissa |last7=Majara |first7=Grace |last8=Massu |first8=Maude |last9=Meyers |first9=Lis |display-authors=etal |title=Women’s empowerment and Savings Groups: Monitoring and results measurement toolkit |publisher=FSD Africa |date=2019 |url=https://fsdafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/SEEP_SG-Womens-Empowerment_MRM-Toolkit.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rickard2019womens, author = {Rickard, Katherine and Anderson, C. Leigh and Chidiac, Sybil and de Hoop, Thomas and Gammage, Sarah and Howlett, Melissa and Majara, Grace and Massu, Maude and Meyers, Lis and Zahid, Iram and Meysonnat, Aline and Panetta, David and Peterman, Amber and Sidhu, Anu and Tungaraza, Stella and Walcott, Rebecca and Wheaton, Ashley}, title = {{Women’s empowerment and Savings Groups: Monitoring and results measurement toolkit}}, institution = {FSD Africa}, year = {2019}, url = {https://fsdafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/SEEP_SG-Womens-Empowerment_MRM-Toolkit.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }