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This presentation discusses the current situation of women's economic empowerment, highlighting the lack of attention and resources devoted to the issue. It also explores the incompatibility between women's economic contributions and international development goals, as well as the gender biases in macro-economic policies. The presentation proposes concrete actions to address these challenges, such as increasing financial services for women, eliminating gender biases in financial institutions, and incorporating gender perspectives into budget processes. It also emphasizes the need to identify good practices and establish a measure of women's economic empowerment.
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Women’s Economic Empowerment: current realities and priorities for the future Presentation to Women 2000-III: Gender Equity in EconomicsJuly 7th 2005, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Situation analysis • International global consensus on the importance of women’s economic empowerment; • Lack of attention and resources devoted to the issue of women’s economic empowerment; • Lack of coherence between macro-economic policies and development policies and programmes; • True economic empowerment for women remains elusive;
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 world’s illiterate; • Poor women represent two thirds of the world’s poor people; • Women provide up to 70% of agricultural labour and produce over 90% of the world’s food; • Women occupy between 20 and 40 % of managerial positions; • The labour force of the informal economy is overwhelmingly female;
INSTRAW’s work on women’s economic empowerment…. • Integration of gender and women’s 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 women’s economic empowerment
Integrate gender into economic policy and decision-making • Incompatibility between: • Women’s 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
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
Identify good practices • Need to systematically evaluate micro-finance and other initiatives; • Impacts on women’s 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.
Establish a measure of women’s 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 women’s economic status; • Measurement of all the many ways in which women contribute to economic growth and development; • INSTRAW’s research on the gender dimensions of remittances
