Assessing multicountry programs through a “Reach, Benefit, Empower, Transform” lens

We use the “Reach, Benefit, Empower, Transform” framework to analyze empowerment impacts of a multicountry program in Ethiopia, Niger, Nepal, and Kyrgyzstan. In most countries, women are more disempowered than men, with excessive workload and lack of group membership important contributors to disempowerment. The program improved women's aggregate empowerment measures and gender parity in all countries. Reflecting the program's group-based approach, women experienced positive impacts on collective agency indicators in all countries. In Kyrgyzstan, an intervention approach involving both women and men contributed to positive impacts across most indicators. Although impacts on overall workload were mostly null, we identified tradeoffs between productive and reproductive work and qualitative studies highlight the unintended consequences of increased workload for women in livelihood interventions.