Go v e r n a n c e f o r i n c l u s i o n : P a r t i c i p a t i o n a n d d i a l o g u e employees, producers and entrepreneurs (Strategy&, 2012). Private sector initiatives – often operated alongside INGO interventions – such as Walmart’s Women’s Economic Empowerment Project1 and Coca-Cola’s 5by20 plan2, include commitments to empowering women by sourcing from women-owned businesses and providing access to markets and training (Dolan, 2014). Financial schemes have been credited with increasing women’s access to resources, which can in turn lead to stabilised livelihoods and, arguably, broadened choices through increased bargaining power (OECD DAC, 2012). And, indeed, research indicates that formal or semi-formal paid work offers the most promising pathway to women’s economic empowerment (Kabeer, 2012). Yet, while involving women in the formal/paid economy has evident benefits, whether participation in the market by itself translates to ‘empowerment’ more broadly is questionable and there is a need to challenge the assumption that access to resources determines power over resources (a paid woman does not necessarily have any more decision-making capacity than an unpaid woman). So-called ‘magic bullet’ interventions, such as micro-finance schemes, have come under scrutiny given their failure to address the underlying factors of ‘disempowerment’. Indeed, as Kabeer (2012) asserts: ‘Merely increasing access to markets does not necessarily address the terms on which poor women and men enter different market arenas or their ability to negotiate a fairer deal for themselves.’ There are other considerations to keep in mind when advocating for women’s economic participation – including evidence from practitioner studies that time poverty is increasingly rife, with women experiencing the ‘double burden’ of formal and informal employment (Dolan, 2014). Rather than paid work replacing women’s unpaid work, it is often done ‘as well as’. Additionally, a woman’s economic advances may, in fact, trigger greater power struggles at household level given perceptions of their intent and/or ability to exercise greater autonomy. A study in South Asia highlights that ‘women’s paid employment is unrelated to having a Overview Commonwealth Governance Handbook 2014/15 90 Sally Baden, Social Development Direct Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society have long pursued women’s empowerment, both as a goal in itself and as a process of enhancing the voice of marginalised people. This has included collective organising for social justice, rights and emancipation, sometimes linked to wider processes of movement building, including that of the women’s movement. The economic empowerment specifically of women became a major focus of debate in the 1990s. This sometimes controversial debate was linked to the so-called micro-finance revolution, where development actors saw their interventions as putting cash in women’s hands for the first time and to varying degrees equated this with economic empowerment (Goetz, 1996; Kabeer, 2001). More recently, bilateral and multilateral agencies, as well as some feminists and economists, have focused on women’s economic empowerment in terms of its relationship with broader economic development and growth (Duflo, 2012; Kabeer, 2012). The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has also taken an interest in the contribution of women to economic growth. In 2014 Christine Lagarde of the IMF was in Japan speaking about ‘unleashing the economic power and potential of women’ as a means of solving the economic crisis and stalled growth. Increasingly – and necessarily – the private sector is engaged with women’s economic empowerment, working with international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) and donors, and in its own right. For the last few years the British Department for International Development (DFID) has been working with the Nike Foundation on a strategic collaboration, Girl Hubi, which ‘empowers girls through providing economic assets’. Global corporations, such as Walmart and Coca-Cola, have targets for economically empowering women, and employ women’s economic empowerment advisers. Of course, businesses have a different perspective on women’s economic empowerment, including seeing women as a large untapped market of consumers – referred to in a new global campaign as ‘the third billion’ii. We seem some distance from the perspectives of civil society and international NGOs on power and process, and yet these earlier discourses continue to inform some of our thinking and practice. Given the profile of women’s economic empowerment among international agencies, practitioners and researchers are required to design programmes to deliver women’s economic empowerment or to devise ways to ‘measure’ this as an outcome. Empowerment of women There is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women. No other policy is as likely to raise economic productivity, or to reduce infant and maternal mortality. No other policy is as sure to improve nutrition and promote health … No other policy is as powerful in increasing the chances of education for the next generation. Kofi A. Annan UN Commission on the Status of Women Mokoro seminar While economic empowerment of women has gained considerable traction in the development arena, the corporate world and beyond, it has also been the subject of significant debate. In September 2014 Mokoro hosted a seminar, chaired by Sally Baden (independent consultant), that brought together Dr Elizabeth Daley (Mokoro principal consultant), Dr Catherine Dolan (reader in anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and associate fellow at the Said Business School, Oxford University) and Christine Svarer (head of women’s economic empowerment and private sector engagement at CARE International) to discuss understandings of women’s economic empowerment and explore approaches, strategies and alliances for success. Outputs from the seminar are available at: www.mokoro.co.uk/seminars/30.
CEP template 2012
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