This brief, developed by the Feed the Future Enabling Environment for Food Security project, takes a deeper look at gender indicators in the 2017 Enabling the Business of Agriculture Index. It synthesizes areas covered by the data that can be used to inform inclusive agriculture-led growth in support of the US Government’s Global Food Security Strategy.

The World Bank’s Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA) Index offers detailed information about the costs and complexity of regulation in a country’s agricultural sector. Launched in 2015 and released annually, the EBA measures and scores the strength of the legal and institutional environment for agribusinesses. In 2017, this included 62 economies across eight topic indicators including: Seed, Fertilizer, Machinery, Finance, Markets, Transport, Water, and ICT. This same year, the World Bank added four new EBA topic indicators that are measured but not scored: Gender, Land, Livestock and Environmental Sustainability. The introduction of a dedicated Gender indicator underscores the relevance of gender equality and female empowerment to advance food security, resilience, and inclusive agriculture-led growth. EBA’s Gender data is structured around three themes: the availability of sex-disaggregated data, restrictions on women’s employment in agriculture, and women’s participation and leadership in collective groups.