In recent years, a wide range of actors have embraced the goal of women’s economic empowerment. The change in discourse is a significant achievement of the women’s movement, which has been able to catapult a concept that was developed in feminist research and advocacy networks into the mainstream of policy debate. However, up-take by powerful actors and institutions often means that such concepts (like governance and participation) are reinterpreted to fit the interests of those who use them. In the process, they lose their original clarity, becoming fuzzy and ambiguous.
This is quite clear in the way “empowerment” is being used these days. Some see in women a largely untapped market of consumers (good for boosting profits), while others talk about unleashing women’s economic power and potential as a means to solve the lingering problems caused by the global financial crisis and stalled growth (good for growth). No one would deny the importance of nurturing synergies between women’s economic empowerment and wider economic prosperity. Women’s participation in the workforce, for example, contributes to economic dynamism by bringing more income into the household, boosting aggregate demand and expanding the tax base.
Without a monitoring framework that squarely focuses on women’s rights, it is difficult to know what lies behind lofty claims of 'empowering women'. A fundamental question, however, is whether these presumed “win-win” scenarios stand up to scrutiny, and what is in it for women? Does it expand their practical enjoyment of their rights, as Barb MacLaren recently argued? Or does it simply harness their time, knowledge and resourcefulness to serve development ends with little or no benefit to women themselves?
