Understanding Womens Empowerment

With the 21st century upon us, many people are talking about all the earth changes that will occur. However, in this inspirational book, best-selling author Louise L. Hay reveals that the primary changes we will see will be internal changes. She points out that when we, as women, are willing to shift our internal ground, our earth, we will o...

Many development programs that aim to alleviate poverty and improve investments in human capital consider women’s empowerment a key pathway by which to achieve impact and often target women as their main beneficiaries. Despite this, women’s empowerment dimensions are often not rigorously measured and are at times merely assumed. This paper starts by reflecting on the concept and measurement of women’s empowerment and then reviews some of the structural interventions that aim to influence underlying gender norms in society and eradicate gender discrimination. It then proceeds to review the evidence of the impact of three types of interventions—cash transfer programs, agricultural interventions, and microfinance programs—on women’s empowerment, nutrition, or both. Qualitative evidence on conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs generally points to positive impacts on women’s empowerment, although quantitative research findings are more heterogenous. CCT programs produce mixed results on long-term nutritional status, and very limited evidence exists of their impacts on micronutrient status. The little evidence available on unconditional cash transters (UCT) indicates mixed impacts on women’s empowerment and positive impacts on nutrition; however, recent reviews comparing CCT and UCT programs have found little difference in terms of their effects on stunting and they have found that conditionality is less important than other factors, such as access to healthcare and child age and sex. Evidence of cash transfer program impacts depending on the gender of the transfer recipient or on the conditionality is also mixed, although CCTs with non-health conditionalities seem to have negative impacts on nutritional status. The impacts of programs based on the gender of the transfer recipient show mixed results, but almost no experimental evidence exists of testing gender-differentiated impacts of a single program. Agricultural interventions—specifically home gardening and dairy projects—show mixed impacts on women’s empowerment measures such as time, workload, and control over income; but they demonstrate very little impact on nutrition. Implementation modalities are shown to determine differential impacts in terms of empowerment and nutrition outcomes. With regard to the impact of microfinance on women’s empowerment, evidence is also mixed, although more recent reviews do not find any impact on women’s empowerment. The impact of microfinance on nutritional status is mixed, with no evidence of impact on micronutrient status. Across all three types of programs (cash transfer programs, agricultural interventions, and microfinance programs), very little evidence exists on pathways of impact, and evidence is often biased toward a particular region. The paper ends with a discussion of the findings and remaining evidence gaps and an outline of recommendations for research.

"The proposed edited book on Women Empowerment: Challenges and Strategies, deals with the problems associated with the women community suffering from marginalization and the ways to address their identity and human rights concerns. The status of women in every nation was deprived and never considered. They were considered as mere machines to fulfill mere different duties. During ancient ages, we can see the evolution of changing and taking new perspectives. The concept of female in Manusmriti and in Puranas of considering them as dependents and deities is contradictory. There are still places where women are still considered as deprived and are still under chains it is the duty of the privileged to empower the underprivileged.Women empowerment programs failed as they overlooked the structural factors that perpetuated oppression and exploitation. The fulfillment of practical needs such as food, health care, and education cannot empower women unless the long-term strategic needs are met. The process of empowerment requires a transformation of structures of sub ordinance, control over material and intellectual resources, gaining decisions, making authority and reduction of gender inequality.The present book is the collection of Twenty-two research papers enlightens and thought-provoking articles contributed by research scholars throwing light on the women empowerment and role of religion and policies, women and nutrition, gender sensitization, role of education, status of working women in unorganized sector, role of media and NGO in promoting women empowerment, empowerment of Indian women –a challenge of 21st century, life skills and older women with reference to old age homes, depiction of women in literature and Marginalization of Women Characters in literature, social organization and woman empowerment and entrepreneurshipThe book will be an important reference source for scholars in the fields of rights of the marginalized sections, rights of the women, the role of education & practice and gender studies. The purpose of this edited book is to provide a common platform for academicians and policymakers for a comprehensive deliberation on issues relating to social sector development in our society. The research papers and various articles covering so many themes of social awareness for education and social sector development are compiled in one place so that anyone can get easy access to their research.This book is edited basically for the students, teachers, researchers, and academics. The students pursuing their masters/ Ph.D. degree and doing dissertations/thesis on women empowerment may also be highly benefited by this book."

In this paper, the authors describe the adaptation and validation of a project-level WEAI (or pro-WEAI) that agricultural development projects can use to identify key areas of women’s (and men’s) disempowerment, design appropriate strategies to address identified deficiencies, and monitor project outcomes related to women’s empowerment. The 12 pro-WEAI indicators are mapped to three domains: intrinsic agency (power within), instrumental agency (power to), and collective agency (power with). A gender parity index compares the empowerment scores of men and women in the same household. The authors describe the development of pro-WEAI, including: (1) pro-WEAI’s distinctiveness from other versions of the WEAI; (2) the process of piloting pro-WEAI in 13 agricultural development projects during the Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, phase 2 (GAAP2); (3) analysis of quantitative data from the GAAP2 projects, including intrahousehold patterns of empowerment; and (4) a summary of the findings from the qualitative work exploring concepts of women’s empowerment in the project sites. The paper concludes with a discussion of lessons learned from pro-WEAI and possibilities for further development of empowerment metrics.

In September 2014, the Global Forum on Innovation in Health Professional Education and the Forum on Public-Private Partnerships for Global Health and Safety of the Institute of Medicine convened a workshop on empowering women and strengthening health systems and services through investing in nursing and midwifery enterprise. Experts in women's empowerment, development, health systems' capacity building, social enterprise and finance, and nursing and midwifery explored the intersections between and among these domains. Innovative and promising models for more sustainable health care delivery that embed women's empowerment in their missions were examined. Participants also discussed uptake and scale; adaptation, translation, and replication; financing; and collaboration and partnership. Empowering Women and Strengthening Health Systems and Services Through Investing in Nursing and Midwifery Enterprise summarizes the presentations and discussion of the workshop. This report highlights examples and explores broad frameworks for existing and potential intersections of different sectors that could lead to better health and well-being of women around the world, and how lessons learned from these examples might be applied in the United States.

"This report examines the distribution and correlates of two different dimensions of the empowerment of currently married women age 15-49 in 23 developing countries"-- P. xv.

This book investigates the barriers to women’s economic empowerment in the Global South. Drawing on evidence from a wide range of countries, the book outlines important lessons and practical solutions for promoting gender equality. Despite global progress in closing gender gaps in education and health, women’s economic empowerment has lagged behind, with little evidence that economic growth promotes gender equality. International Development Research Centre’s (IDRC) Growth and Economic Opportunities for Women (GrOW) programme was set up to provide policy lessons, insights, and concrete solutions that could lead to advances in gender equality, particularly on the role of institutions and macroeconomic growth, barriers to labour market access for women, and the impact of women’s care responsibilities. This book showcases rigorous and multi-disciplinary research emerging from this ground-breaking programme, covering topics such as the school-to-work transition, child marriage, unpaid domestic work and childcare, labour market segregation, and the power of social and cultural norms that prevent women from fully participating in better paid sectors of the economy. With a range of rich case studies from Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Nepal, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, and Uganda, this book is perfect for students, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers working on women’s economic empowerment and gender equality in the Global South.

"Women Empowerment: Understanding the Unique Strengths and Challenges of the Female Gender" is a comprehensive guide to understanding the concept of women empowerment and its importance in today's society. The book delves into the historical perspective of women's rights and the challenges women have faced throughout history. It also examines the social and cultural barriers that prevent women from reaching their full potential and how these can be overcome. "Women Empowerment: Understanding the Unique Strengths and Challenges of the Female Gender" explores the economic empowerment of women, including the gender pay gap and the challenges faced by working women. It also looks at the importance of women's participation in politics and the role of education in promoting women's empowerment. Additionally, the book examines the laws and policies that protect women's rights and the role of the legal system in addressing violence against women.

The empowerment of women by their increased participation in all aspects of political, social and economic life has become one of the major goals of democratic and participatory movements, as well as women s organizations throughout the world. Beyond offering an understanding why empower women, concept and framework for women s empowerment, this book seeks to discuss the approaches and strategies for empowering women by outlining the strategies, mechanisms and tools that women are using for their empowerment. An important and timely contribution to a major ongoing debate on women s empowerment, this book will interest all those involved with women studies, rural development, and voluntary, initiatives at the grossroots level.