By Lauren Hendricks, President & CEO of Trickle Up, and Christian Pennotti, Executive Director of Digital Impact & AI at CARE

In our last post, When Access Meets Agency: The Future of Women’s Digital Empowerment, we explored what it means for women not only to be digitally included, but digitally empowered—able to act, decide, and lead in digital spaces. That post sparked an important question: if digital agency matters, how do we measure it?

To date, digital development has focused on access and inclusion: tracking who owns a phone, who connects to the internet, and who uses digital tools. These indicators are essential, but incomplete. They tell us who is online, not who is in control. They show us connection, but not confidence; usage, but not autonomy.

That is why Trickle Up and CARE have developed a new Digital Agency Measurement Framework—a tool designed to help us move from simply talking about digital empowerment to actually measuring it. Understanding and quantifying agency will help organizations design more effective programs, support women’s choices, and influence policies that go beyond access to true inclusion.

Without measurement, digital agency remains aspirational, something we promote in principle but cannot evaluate or build into our program designs. Measurement turns aspiration into accountability. It helps us identify where women’s agency is constrained by safety, confidence, norms, or access; design better interventions that strengthen women’s ability to act and decide; and generate credible evidence for donors and policymakers to shape inclusive digital ecosystems.

If we want to design for agency, we must start measuring it. Trickle Up and CARE are working together to operationalize this idea, grounding the concept of digital agency in field-ready indicators that can be tested, compared, and refined across contexts. The framework builds off of learnings with colleagues at CGIAR, and other stakeholders for whom this topic is a priority and takes a holistic, stepwise view of digital empowerment: it begins with the building blocks of access and connectivity, then progresses toward confidence, control, and ultimately empowerment. Each level is both a prerequisite for and a product of agency.

1. Digital access and connectivitY

This first level looks at the foundations: device ownership, internet reliability, affordability, and the enabling environment that supports digital participation. In Trickle Up’s programs in India and Guatemala, access to affordable smartphones remains a crucial first step, as it does in CARE’s “Digital CARE Package” approach to digital inclusion across East and Southern Africa. But access alone isn’t the goal—it’s the gateway. The real transformation begins when women start using these devices to build knowledge, networks, and livelihoods.

2. Digital Literacy and Skills

The second level measures a woman’s ability to use digital tools safely and effectively, from basic functions like texting or mobile money transfers to evaluating online information and solving simple technical problems.

Through Trickle Up’s Coach Up platform and WhatsApp learning groups, participants not only learn new digital functions, but also gain problem-solving confidence. They move from being passive recipients of training to self-directed learners who teach and troubleshoot for their peers. At CARE, Digital Champions networked through WhatsApp accelerate peer-to-peer learning and serve as trusted digital advisors, accompanying savings group members along their individual digital learning journeys.

3. Digital Use and Application

This level assesses how women apply digital tools for economic, social, and informational purposes, and examines whether technology is enabling new opportunities and expanding agency in daily life.

In India, participants in Trickle Up’s MPowered project use YouTube to identify, adopt, and learn nontraditional entrepreneurial activities, from mushroom cultivation to mobile repair. This use of open-access platforms for skills acquisition and innovation reflects a powerful shift: women are no longer just consumers of content, but creators of opportunity. The Strive Women program implemented by CARE is using social media as an entry point to digital tools that support female entrepreneurs in Peru, Vietnam, and Pakistan. Combining social media engagement with step-by-step training matches each stage of business growth, from mobile banking to inventory apps and e-commerce.

4. Digital Confidence, Autonomy, and Control

True agency requires confidence and the belief that one can learn, adapt, and decide independently. This dimension captures both self-efficacy and control over digital choices.

In a Trickle Up program in West Bengal, one participant’s decision to manage her own digital payments marked a profound personal milestone. For her, it wasn’t only about mastering a transaction app; it was about taking ownership of financial decisions and moving from reliance to autonomy. At CARE, one of the main things heard from women in crisis is that digital cash transfers not only help restore a degree of dignity, but also fundamental control over their lives. Such moments illustrate the intersection of confidence, control, and empowerment.

5. Digital Inclusion and Empowerment Outcomes

The final level measures the outcomes that result from agency: economic inclusion, social participation, and perceived empowerment. In Mexico, participants in Trickle Up’s CRECE program established a community-wide WhatsApp group to exchange information about sales, markets, and local opportunities. Over time, the group evolved beyond business. Women began sharing updates about schools, elections, and community events, thus transforming a digital space into a platform for collective voice and civic participation. That progression from connection to collaboration is the essence of digital agency.

And it’s central to CARE’s efforts to bring the power of technology to the organization’s longstanding work alongside communities. We have seen time and again the power of small groups to make big impacts, and how trust breeds collaboration and collective success. When women have the access, skills, confidence, and control—the digital agency they deserve and need—their potential only grows.

Building an Evidence Base

In 2026, Trickle Up and CARE will pilot this framework across programs in India, Latin America, and Africa. The pilots will focus on refining indicators that are rigorous, context-sensitive, and adaptable, with the goal to build a validated tool that NGOs, donors, and governments can use to measure not just digital access, but digital agency—and to link those metrics to economic inclusion outcomes.

This collaborative approach draws on existing global models—from GSMA’s Mobile Gender Gap Report to UN Women’s Power On initiative and the World Bank’s Digital Economy for Africa framework—while translating them into practical metrics for women at the frontlines of poverty reduction.

Building an evidence base for digital agency will require collaboration across the ecosystem. Trickle Up and CARE invite peer organizations, donors, and researchers to join this effort to share data, test indicators, and strengthen the methodology together. By combining perspectives from implementation and research, we can ensure that the measurement of digital agency is credible, actionable, and a shared public good that advances gender equality in the digital age.

Measuring digital agency is more than an academic exercise, it’s a commitment to ensure that technology fulfills its promise of inclusion and empowerment for all women. Only by knowing what agency looks like can we design systems that truly support it.

We invite partners to join us in this next step: turning digital access into digital agency that transforms lives.

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