Women’s Economic Empowerment

Description:
Scope for Sida’s Engagement / This working paper attempts to defi ne women’s economic empowerment, its rationale, and the scope of work in the context of Sida’s engagement. Sida defi nes women’s economic empowerment as the process which enables women to make strategic life choices. Women’s economic empowerment can only be achieved through equal access to and control over critical economic resources and opportunities, and the elimination of structural gender inequalities in the labor market including a better sharing of paid and unpaid work between men and women. This paper recommends specifi c interventions to directly increase women’s access and control of economic resources in the areas of entrepreneurship and private sector development (key area 1); land and property (key area 2); labor markets and decent work (key area 3). It also recommends interventions which tackle the causes of women’s economic discrimination by addressing women’s unpaid work and family responsibilities (key area 4); human capital (key area5); social protection services (key area 6); and agriculture and rural development (key area 7).