Question

What are the factors disencouraging women empowerment?

Answer 1

This month the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) released a report detailing ten factors that can either enable or constrain women’s economic empowerment. Drawing on data from the Gallup World Poll—which covers 99 percent of the world’s population age fifteen years or older—the report analyzes how these complex and interacting factors can inform policy solutions to advance women’s economic empowerment.

The report signals an important transition from previous studies on women’s economic empowerment—navigating from the question of whypolicy should support women’s economic empowerment to how it can do so.

In defining women’s economic empowerment, ODI notes that it is "concerned not just with increases in women’s access to income and assets, but also with control over them and how they use that control in other aspects of life." In other words, how does economic participation change their lives? To answer this question, the ODI breaks its ten factors into two categories: direct and underlying factors.

Direct factors, related to women’s "individual or collective lived experiences," include:

1. Education, skills developing, and training;

2. Access to quality, decent paid work;

3. Address unpaid care and work burdens;

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4. Access to property, assets, and financial services;

5. Collective action and leadership;

6. And social protection.

Underlying factors, pertaining to structural conditions, include:

1. Labor market characteristics;

2. Fiscal policy;

3. Legal, regulatory, and policy framework;

4. And gender norms and discriminatory social norms.