Overlooked consequences could harm women's rights

Subject

Assessment of women's empowerment policies.

Significance

A new study from Colombia published in March showed a high positive correlation between indicators of women's empowerment and rates of domestic violence. Development organisations are also increasingly acknowledging that their projects aimed at promoting gender equality have unintended negative effects on women, raising questions about how best to design development interventions that promote gender equality.

Impacts

• Ignoring the negative consequences of empowerment programmes for women could reduce funding in the long term.
• These negative consequences could also create a backlash against women's empowerment among women themselves.
• Without also addressing men's attitudes, women's empowerment programmes will be hobbled.