Women

1
Womens Economic Empowerment current realities
and priorities for the future
Presentation to Women 2000-III Gender Equity in
EconomicsJuly 7th 2005, Amsterdam, The
Netherlands
2
Situation analysis

• International global consensus on the importance
  of womens economic empowerment
• Lack of attention and resources devoted to the
  issue of womens economic empowerment
• Lack of coherence between macro-economic policies
  and development policies and programmes
• True economic empowerment for women remains
  elusive

3
Situation analysis

• Globally, women still hold only 15.6 of
  parliamentary seats
• Women earn less than 78 of the wages that men
  earn for the same work
• Women constitute two thirds of the worlds
  illiterate
• Poor women represent two thirds of the worlds
  poor people
• Women provide up to 70 of agricultural labour
  and produce over 90 of the worlds food
• Women occupy between 20 and 40 of managerial
  positions
• The labour force of the informal economy is
  overwhelmingly female

4
INSTRAWs work on womens economic empowerment.

• Integration of gender and womens issues in
  global economic policy and decision-making
• Review and analysis of economic programmes and
  projects to identify and disseminate good
  practices
• Call to establish a true measure of womens
  economic empowerment

5
Integrate gender into economic policy and
decision-making

• Incompatibility between
• Womens economic contributions in both market and
  non-market sectors
• International development goals and priorities
  and
• Current macro-economic policy and
  decision-making.
• Economic policies are seldom, if ever, gender
  neutral
• Formulated and implemented without an assessment
  of their potential gender impacts

6
Integrate gender into economic policy and
decision-making

• Address the real impact of macro-economic
  policies through concrete actions
• Increase financial services available to women
• Develop legal frameworks that eliminate gender
  biases in financial institutions
• Increase inclusion of poor women in economic
  bodies and financial structures
• Incorporate gender perspectives into budget
  processes
• Undertake gender analyses of economic policies
• Develop policy frameworks that allow women to
  move away from the ghetto of micro-finance

7
Identify good practices

• Need to systematically evaluate micro-finance and
  other initiatives
• Impacts on womens economic status, and their
  status within the household and community
• Establish successful experiences and best
  practices on which to base future initiatives
• Identify gaps to guide future policy advocacy and
  gender mainstreaming efforts.

8
Establish a measure of womens economic
empowerment

• 3 different elements - resources, agency and
  achievements
• Concretizes an otherwise ambiguous concept
• How do we define empowerment?
• Who defines empowerment?
• How do we know when women are empowered?
• Who gets to decide when women are empowered?
• Baseline to measure improvements and changes in
  womens economic status
• Measurement of all the many ways in which women
  contribute to economic growth and development
• INSTRAWs research on the gender dimensions of
  remittances