Rural women have enormous potential to produce and scale up solutions to the climate crisis, food insecurity and poverty, but they often still lack the resources and recognition they need to succeed.

That’s why Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management (WOCAN) created the world’s first framework measuring and monetizing women’s empowerment – the W+ standard. Developed with women in rural Kenya and Nepal, the framework provides metrics and procedures to quantify, verify and monetize women’s empowerment across six areas: time, health, education and knowledge, food security, income and assets, and leadership.

In this episode, we’re joined by WOCAN executive director Jeannette Gurung, and the founder and CEO of Ecosystem Regeneration Associates, Hannah Simmons, to learn what that means in practice and how the framework is being used to make climate finance work for women.