> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.opendemocracy.net/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# CSW:  women's empowerment or just smart economics?
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/csw-womens-empowerment-or-just-smart-economics/
- Published: 2008-02-23T12:02:55.000Z
- Updated: 2019-02-14T22:39:30.000Z
- Author: Jane Gabriel
- Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 18:41

Half way to 2015, the shortfall in funding necessary to achieve Millennium Development Goal Three "*to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women*" is already $8.6 billion and is expected to grow to $23.8 billion. The picture of financing for women's empowerment is a bleak one. The second [Fund*her*](http://www.awid.org/go.php?pg=fundher%5F2&ref=opendemocracy.net) report by [AWID](http://www.awid.org/?ref=opendemocracy.net) into funding for women's rights work makes depressing reading (it's a brilliant piece of work and worth reading if you can face the bad news). More than a thousand women's rights organisations were surveyed around the world and more than half reported a drop in income since 2000\. Two thirds had incomes of less than $50k a year and one third has less than $10k.

When [Muhammad Yunus](http://www.muhammadyunus.org/?ref=opendemocracy.net) won the Nobel Peace prize micro-credit was being hailed as the ‘silver bullet' for empowering the poorest women, so looking at the IGO/UN schedule I'm struck by the fact that only one of the 68 scheduled events refers to micro-credit and there is no reference to it at all in the draft [Agreed Conclusions](http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/csw52/Draft%20Agreed%20conclusions%2012Feb08.pdf?ref=opendemocracy.net) that representatives from 45 countries will spend the next two weeks trying to agree on. No longer the panacea for reducing poverty, it seems that micro-finance is out and macro-finance is in.

The background report of this year's [Expert Group](http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/egm/financing%5Fgender%5Fequality/egm%5Ffinancing%5Fgender%5Fequality.htm?ref=opendemocracy.net) says there is "growing evidence that gender inequality is ‘bad economics' so the language this year is of corporate social responsibility, social enterprises, endowments, planned giving and financial investments: a session by the World Bank talks of women's empowerment as "smart economics". So what does this really mean for gender equality and women's empowerment? Is there such a thing as economic empowerment without political empowerment? If women really had power would they be talking about empowerment in an economic framework or in a social justice framework? I'll be finding out over the next ten days....