Women’s Economic Empowerment Framework

A. Introduction

The Investing in Women (IW) program aims to improve gender equality in the workplace and in the approaches of investors. The goal of the program, however, is to accelerate women’s economic empowerment in the region and, through this, to contribute to inclusive economic growth.

To be able to monitor IW’s contribution towards this goal, IW needs a clear framework for thinking about and measuring contribution to women’s economic empowerment within the context of the program’s interventions and partnerships.

This paper therefore attempts to answer three questions:

• What do we mean by women’s economic empowerment in the context of IW?
• What are the pathways and spheres of influence through which IW contributes to women’s economic empowerment?
• Within the boundaries of what is feasible and realistic, how will IW’s contribution to women’s economic empowerment be measured?

B. Defining women’s economic empowerment

The first step is to clarify a definition of “women’s economic empowerment” that can be applied to IW.

Many development agencies have come up with definitions of women’s economic empowerment to help guide their work, some of which are given in Annex 1. All definitions include more than one dimension, and common across them is the inclusion of two essential components:

• Economic advancement i.e. economic gain and access to resources
• Agency or power i.e. the ability to define one’s goals and act on them

The definition of economic empowerment provided in the IW Investment Design Document (p12) is multidimensional and, in common with other definitions, emphasizes both the economic advancement as well as agency/power aspects of WEE:

Economic empowerment is the capacity of women and men to participate in, contribute to and benefit from growth processes in ways which recognises the value of their contributions, respect their dignity and make it possible to negotiate a fairer distribution of the benefits of growth. Economic empowerment increases women’s access to economic resources and opportunities including jobs, financial services, property and other productive assets, skills development and market information. Women’s economic participation and empowerment are fundamental to strengthening women’s rights and enabling women to have control over their lives and exert influence in society.