Women's Economic Empowerment


Book Description

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 and Microfinance in the Global South


Book Description

Women and Microfinance in the Global South is a grounded exploration of the intersections of neoliberal ideology and feminism.




The Business of Women's Empowerment


Book Description

With catchphrases like “smart economics” and “the business case for gender equality,” global corporations are increasingly involved in gender and development politics in the Global South. This book focuses on an emblematic example of this tendency to interrogate the proposed win-win relationship between corporate profit opportunities and the economic advancement of women in marginalized economic positions. The Coca-Cola Company’s 5by20 program has won broad recognition for its global reach and ambitious goal: to economically empower five million female micro-entrepreneurs across its supply chain before the end of 2020. Based on situated engagements with program implementers and participants in Mexico and South Africa, the study moves beyond the unequivocally positive effects conveyed by the program’s rhetoric. It examines the appropriation of social values to strengthen the brand; the use of self-help psychology to enhance entrepreneurial conduct and exempt weak economic results; and the recasting of women’s precarious labor in terms of entrepreneurship – which conceals structural causes of poverty and impediments of sustainable business development. Providing unique insights into the premises and effects of corporate solutions to gender inequality in the Global South, the book contributes to debates on the relations between neoliberal capitalist expansion and feminist emancipatory endeavors.




Linking Gender to Climate Change Impacts in the Global South


Book Description

This authored book assesses the spatial patterns of climate change and gender inequalities across the Global South, and analyzes the disproportionate impacts that climate change processes have on women in these regions. Though many books attempt to incorporate gender issues into climate change, this book examines the issue as a whole by addressing the relationship between climate change and gender from a number of perspectives. The book incorporates case studies from various regions of the Global South, a designation broadly defined as the countries of Africa, Middle and South America, and most of Asia including the Middle East. In the book's two main sections, readers will learn about how climate change affects access to regional opportunities and resources, the obstacles created by climate change that affect women more strongly than men, and how affected female populations adapt to changing conditions and protect their local livelihoods. Section one, covering chapters 1 and 2, addresses the spatial patterns of climate change and gender inequalities/inequities across the Global South by analyzing long-term trends from the latest reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the World Economic forum. Section two, covering chapters 3 through 7, discusses the critical issues related to climate change and gender inequality, and presents literature reviews and case studies in the Global South. The different issues and perspectives discussed include health, water and food security, education, conflicts, migration, participation in decision-making processes, and changing urban social landscapes. The concluding chapter discusses policy initiatives and makes recommendations to some of the gender mainstreaming through empowerment and participation. This interdisciplinary book will appeal to academics and policy-makers beyond just the fields of environmental sciences and gender studies, and may be adopted as a resource for graduate students and researchers.




Global Empowerment of Women


Book Description

The empowerment of women is a broadly endorsed strategy for solving a host of difficult problems, from child poverty to gender violence to international development. The seventeen international scholars in this multi-disciplinary volume offer thoughtful critiques of the notion of empowerment based on their studies in twenty countries in all regions of the world. The comparative introduction places concepts of empowerment in the context of models of the market and of community, showing how contradictions in these models as they are enacted on the ground provide both spaces and constraints for women. The chapters consider opportunities for women in the context of globalization, resurgent nationalism and politicized religion, cultures of masculinity, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa. They show how initiatives at national or global levels are transformed by local cultures and power structures, and demonstrate the fruitfulness of tensions between universal values of human rights and contextualized understandings. This landmark, multi-disciplinary collection of original studies by distinguished international feminist scholars will be an essential addition to the fields of Political Science, Women’s Studies, Economics, Sociology, International Development, and Environmental Studies.




Women's Empowerment and Global Health


Book Description

"What is women's empowerment, and how and why does it matter for women's health? Despite the rise of a human rights-based approach to women's health and increasing awareness of the synergies between women's health and empowerment, a lack of consensus remains as to how to measure empowerment and successfully intervene in ways that improve health. Women's Empowerment and Global Health provides thirteen detailed, multidisciplinary case studies from across the globe and through the course of a woman's life to show how science and advocacy can be creatively merged to enhance the agency and status of women. Accompanying short videos provide background about programs on the ground in India, the United States, Mexico, Nicaragua, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. Women's Empowerment and Global Health explores the promises and limits of programmatic, scientific, and rights-based work in real-world settings and provides the next generation of researchers and practitioners, as well as students in global and public health, sociology, anthropology, women's studies, law, business, and medicine, with cutting edge and inspirational examples of programs that point the way toward achieving women's equality and fulfilling the right to health."--Provided by publisher.




Voice and Agency


Book Description

"The 2012 report recognized that expanding women's agency - their ability to make decisions and take advantage of opportunities is key to improving their lives as well as the world. This report represents a major advance in global knowledge on this critical front. The vast data and thousands of surveys distilled in this report cast important light on the nature of constraints women and girls continue to face globally. This report identifies promising opportunities and entry points for lasting transformation, such as interventions that reach across sectors and include life-skills training, sexual and reproductive health education, conditional cash transfers, and mentoring. It finds that addressing what the World Health Organization has identified as an epidemic of violence against women means sharply scaling up engagement with men and boys. The report also underlines the vital role information and communication technologies can play in amplifying women's voices, expanding their economic and learning opportunities, and broadening their views and aspirations. The World Bank Group's twin goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity demand no less than the full and equal participation of women and men, girls and boys, around the world." -- Publisher's description.




Women and Trade


Book Description

Trade can dramatically improve women’s lives, creating new jobs, enhancing consumer choices, and increasing women’s bargaining power in society. It can also lead to job losses and a concentration of work in low-skilled employment. Given the complexity and specificity of the relationship between trade and gender, it is essential to assess the potential impact of trade policy on both women and men and to develop appropriate, evidence-based policies to ensure that trade helps to enhance opportunities for all. Research on gender equality and trade has been constrained by limited data and a lack of understanding of the connections among the economic roles that women play as workers, consumers, and decision makers. Building on new analyses and new sex-disaggregated data, Women and Trade: The Role of Trade in Promoting Gender Equality aims to advance the understanding of the relationship between trade and gender equality and to identify a series of opportunities through which trade can improve the lives of women.




Women's Empowerment in South Asia


Book Description

Economic development in the poorest countries often makes better progress when women become involved in, and take a lead in, development projects. Encouraging women’s involvement, however, is often a major difficulty in societies where traditionally women’s status has been inferior and where women are expected to be domestic and passive. This book, based on extensive original research, considers major projects undertaken by non-governmental organisations in Bangladesh to encourage women’s participation. The book identifies the factors which motivated women to be active, discusses how women achieved the level of capacity and knowledge to enable them to serve their communities appropriately, assesses the major difficulties and recommends how empowerment projects can be improved in future. The book concludes that established institutions and traditional customs are often the greatest barrier to women’s participation.