Building Alliances for Women's Empowerment, Reproductive Rights and Health

Women’s empowerment has been at the centre of research focus for many decades. Extant literature examined the process, outcome and various challenges. Some claimed substantial success, while others contradicted with evidence of failure. But the success remains a matter of debate due to lack of empirical evidence of actual empowerment of women around the world. The current study aimed to address this gap by taking a case study method. The study critically evaluates 20 cases carefully sampled to include representatives from the entire country of Bangladesh. The study demonstrates popular beliefs about microfinance often misguide even the borrowers and they start living in a fabricated feeling of empowerment, facing real challenges to achieve true empowerment in their lives. The impact of this finding is twofold; firstly there is a theoretical contribution, where the definition of women’s empowerment is proposed to be revisited considering findings from these cases. And lastly, the policy makers at governmental and non-governmental organisations, and multinational donor agencies need to revise their assessment tools for funding.

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Women’s empowerment and crop diversification in Bangladesh: A possible pathway to climate change adaptation and better nutrition

10.2499/p15738coll2.133306 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Climate Change Adaptation ◽

Women's Empowerment ◽

Women’S Empowerment ◽

Crop Diversification

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Understanding Local Realities of Microfinance and Women's Empowerment in Sri Lanka: The Effectiveness of the Samurdhi Program from the Perspective of Beneficiaries in a Rural Community

Asia Pacific World ◽

10.3167/apw.2013.040204 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 4 (2) ◽

pp. 29-54

Author(s):

Poornima Gayangani Wasana Jayawardana

Keyword(s):

Sri Lanka ◽

Rural Community ◽

Women's Empowerment ◽

Women’S Empowerment

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Women’s Education May Be Even Better Than We Thought: Estimating the Gains from Education When Schooling Ain’t Learning

10.35489/bsg-rise-wp_2020/049 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Michelle Kaffenberger ◽

Lant Pritchett

Keyword(s):

Child Mortality ◽

Women's Education ◽

Basic Education ◽

Women's Empowerment ◽

Women’S Empowerment ◽

Life Outcomes ◽

Primary Schooling ◽

The Impact ◽

Financial Practices ◽

Attenuation Bias

Women’s schooling has long been regarded as one of the best investments in development. Using two different cross-nationally comparable data sets which both contain measures of schooling, assessments of literacy, and life outcomes for more than 50 countries, we show the association of women’s education (defined as schooling and the acquisition of literacy) with four life outcomes (fertility, child mortality, empowerment, and financial practices) is much larger than the standard estimates of the gains from schooling alone. First, estimates of the association of outcomes with schooling alone cannot distinguish between the association of outcomes with schooling that actually produces increased learning and schooling that does not. Second, typical estimates do not address attenuation bias from measurement error. Using the new data on literacy to partially address these deficiencies, we find that the associations of women’s basic education (completing primary schooling and attaining literacy) with child mortality, fertility, women’s empowerment and the associations of men’s and women’s basic education with positive financial practices are three to five times larger than standard estimates. For instance, our country aggregated OLS estimate of the association of women’s empowerment with primary schooling versus no schooling is 0.15 of a standard deviation of the index, but the estimated association for women with primary schooling and literacy, using IV to correct for attenuation bias, is 0.68, 4.6 times bigger. Our findings raise two conceptual points. First, if the causal pathway through which schooling affects life outcomes is, even partially, through learning then estimates of the impact of schooling will underestimate the impact of education. Second, decisions about how to invest to improve life outcomes necessarily depend on estimates of the relative impacts and relative costs of schooling (e.g., grade completion) versus learning (e.g., literacy) on life outcomes. Our results do share the limitation of all previous observational results that the associations cannot be given causal interpretation and much more work will be needed to be able to make reliable claims about causal pathways.

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