Funded by the U.K. Department for International Development and the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), the Arab Women’s Enterprise Fund (AWEF) takes a unique approach to economic development. Working across Jordan, Egypt, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (oPT), AWEF blends market systems and empowerment thinking to stimulate women’s economic empowerment. AWEF is the only market systems development programme in the region with women’s economic empowerment as its core objective. It is implemented through a partnership between DAI Europe (DAI), MarketShare Associates (MSA) – a global consulting firm focused on bringing systems thinking to development solutions – and Education for Employment (EFE), a nongovernmental organization working throughout the Middle East and North Africa. AWEF seeks to reach 150,000 poor women over four years.

This learning brief captures AWEF’s experience in developing an efficient poverty measurement tool that is gender sensitive and empowerment-forward, which it has chosen to call the Disadvantage Assessment. Throughout the process, AWEF sought to push the boundaries of how it measures poverty – by being woman-focused, multidimensional, and context-specific. The authors note that such poverty measurement practices are nascent within the development industry. Therefore, the lessons and recommendations documented in this brief introduce an initial evidence base, while acknowledging the need for further testing and refinement across different contexts and programmes. Moreover, while the Disadvantage Assessment has been developed for all three AWEF country contexts, it has only been piloted in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (oPT). Further data from Jordan and Egypt is expected to provide additional and more nuanced understanding of the tool. As such, this brief is part of an iterative documentation process.