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The study finds the determinants of women empowerment measured in terms of domestic decision-making in a developing economy perspective by considering rural women in India. Women empowerment simply means giving opportunities to women to enable them to be socially and financially independent. Empowerment of women through investment in their education and health has a positive effect on economic growth. Almost 70% of Indian population lives in rural areas. If women in these areas are educated and empowered, they can contribute to the economic growth either directly or indirectly by improving health and education of the future generations. This study indicates that an employed woman, having her own income source, higher educational level, knowledge of legal rights, higher educational level of the mother of the woman, having property in her own name, more freedom of movement during her school days, having high self-esteem and belonging to a relatively affluent background, increases domestic making power of the women, and thus empowerment. Some possible policies are suggested for developing economies.

Women’s empowerment is a multidimensional concept that encompasses different aspects such as access to education, freedom to make vital decisions, labor market access, wages, and political participation, among others. In this research, the authors construct a multidimensional index of women’s empowerment that takes into account individual resources and achievements and analyze its evolution across countries using data from the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations for 17 gender indicators across 96 countries over the period 1995–2015. By means of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, the authors identify three dimensions of women’s empowerment: reproductive health, economic participation, and basic education. In addition, the authors use cluster techniques to classify countries into four groups with similar behavior patterns in the different domains of women’s empowerment: a group of countries with high levels in the domains of reproductive health and basic education but with low levels in economic participation; a group of countries with high levels in the domains of reproductive health and economic participation that should pay attention to education; a group of countries with medium levels across the three dimensions of women’s empowerment, especially in reproductive health and economic participation; and a group of countries with low levels in all the dimensions of women’s empowerment, especially in reproductive health and basic education. The comparison of these different patterns serves to highlight the aspects in which improvements have been made or, on the contrary, to highlight the obstacles that are hindering the improvement of gender equality. Finally, the results suggest that advancements in women’s empowerment improve the countries’ level of development.

Despite some decline, most Sub Saharan African countries still exhibit very high levels of fertility, resulting in the lengthening of the phase of strong population growth. Using Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) data collected over a pooled sample of more than 430,000 married women living in 33 countries, the author examines the relationship between empowerment and desired fertility. The author constructs six different proxies of empowerment: two “objective” proxies (education and labor force participation), three “subjective” proxies (say in household decisions, non-acceptance of domestic violence, and no son preference), and a “relative” proxy (small spousal age difference). The author first shows that these six dimensions are related with one another and highly variable from one country to another across the region. the author then explores the relationship of these dimensions with desired fertility at the individual level. On the pooled sample, the author find that there is a strong and negative relationship between all six dimensions of empowerment and desired fertility: in other words, women who have a low degree of empowerment tend to want a higher number of children. This result still holds when taking into account country fixed-effects to account for country-level characteristics. However, when examining more closely the relationship at the country level, the author finds that there is some variation on the strength of the relationship and that its sign is reversed for some indicators in some countries. Lastly, the author finds that local context matters which suggests that empowerment policies should address both the individual and collective dimensions of empowerment.

For the prosperity of both gender and for social justice, independence and empowerment of women is essential. Empowerment of women not only ensures her personal or household welfare but also spreads positivity throughout the community. This generation of positive externality by empowering women has actually attracted attention worldwide toward exploring the concept of women empowerment as well as analyzing their status. The present research focuses on comparative analysis of the status of women empowerment among the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries and side by side explores its relationship with the various macro-indicators related to growth and development. This study reveals that Maldives and Sri Lanka had a relatively better status of women empowerment as compared to other SAARC countries. Further, based on the panel data analysis, the authors have found that urbanization and globalization have a significant impact on women empowerment. Thus, this holistic approach of measuring women empowerment from a multidimensional perspective and detecting the influencing factors is inevitable for enhancing the status of women at the global level.

This chapter analyzes the role of grassroots organizations as natural helping systems for women’s empowerment in the rural areas of central Mexico. For almost three decades, productive projects have been the preferred strategy by the Mexican government in order to alleviate extreme poverty and promote women’s empowerment. Even if the impact of productive projects on women’s empowerment has been limited, grassroots organizations are created in order to have access to financial resources that have promoted the collective dimension of women’s empowerment. Through semi-structured interviews and participatory observation, this study retrieves the experience of women’s leadership, frustrated by changing public policy, local corruption, and political use of the social policy. In those difficult circumstances, grassroots organizations are fundamental tools for women’s well-being as they promote a specific understanding of empowerment, where family, community, and relatedness are values more important than competition and individualistic achievements.

Purpose – The main objective of this research is to explore the impacts of globalization on gender empowerment.

Methodology – This research uses a design that combines lagged cross-sectional and cross-sectional analyses. We have used ordinary least square regression. The sample size for this research is 48–70 nation-states. We have used gender empowerment measurement as an indicator of decision-making power that women in a society gain in decision making as a group.

Findings – Our findings illustrate variable effects of global economy on gender empowerment. Higher commodity concentration significantly lowers women's access to the formal and informal labor force and women's decision-making power after controlling for economic development, culture, and state's location in the global economy. Foreign direct investment lowers women's share in both the formal and informal labor force and women's decision-making power, while increasing women's share of secondary education. Thus, this research examines wider dimensions of women's experiences. We also find that some policies have positive effects, whereas others have negative effects on gender empowerment.

Originality/value of the chapter – Previous research on globalization and development has discussed the impacts of globalization on women's empowerment. However, researchers have either used women's access to formal work or education or gender development scores as an indicator of women's empowerment. Researchers have not captured women's empowerment completely. We have overcome this limitation by defining empowerment as a complex of access to resources (access to education, formal and informal labor force) and decision-making power (gender empowerment scores).

Women’s economic empowerment (WEE) has become a crucial part of national and international policy-making agendas in the last decades. It has also developed into a field of study and knowledge production promoted and advanced by international organizations and some academic centers. Through the formulation and implementation of programs, these organizations seek to promote such empowerment. Evaluation is a crucial part of the process, assessing the results of interventions in local, regional and national settings. This book chapter aims to critically discuss the role of subjective measurement and the importance of context in these evaluations. Specifically, the status of subjective measurement, their implementation through qualitative methods and how they contribute to understanding context. Firstly, the author offers a brief reflection on the emergence of the subject as a goal and a field. Secondly, the author succinctly discusses a theoretical framework on power, (dis)empowerment and gender relations. In the third section, the author examines three reports that contribute significantly to the current debate on WEE through empirical studies, reviews and analysis. In the discussion section, the author focuses on three points that are used to connect those reports, highlighting their differences and contributions. The final remarks reflect on the importance and advantages of including subjective measurement and the significance of context in our pursuit of ending gender inequality.

In 1995, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) launched the quantitative Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) in its Human Development Report (1999). The GEM has been a feature of this report ever since. In 2004/05, a group of researchers from Edith Cowan University (Perth, Australia) intended to rely on the GEM to study the experiences of factory women in two of Sri Lanka's Export Processing Zones (EPZs). The experience of this team – at the heart of this chapter – is that the quantitative measures of the GEM, particularly the specific ways in which it causes researchers to conceptualise gender and empowerment, are not adequate to understand the nuanced and complex processes of women's experiences in regards to empowerment. The team's experience caused it to question the relevance and utility of the GEM, and in turn, its sole reliance on a quantitative methodology. As a result, the researchers from Edith Cowan changed their original methodological approach and adopted a stronger qualitative emphasis. In turn, this provided a far more realistic insight into the concepts of gender and empowerment, and indeed the lived experiences of the women it sought to represent.

Humanity experiences challenges caused by gender inequality which further obstructs achievement of global sustainable development. Considering gender equality as human equality, this chapter emphasizes women empowerment's role in supporting global sustainable development. Based on literature review, this chapter aims to examine women empowerment's role in and contribution to UN SDGs (sustainable development goals). This chapter underlines that the gender inequality hinders and obstructs global sustainable development and achievement of SDGs. Furthermore, this chapter examines causes of gender inequality as they need to be identified and eliminated to achieve global sustainable development. Women empowerment plays a significant role in solving gender inequality related problems (e.g., health problems, education inequality, discrimination, crime, violence). Women empowerment achieved through supported gender equality can act as a multiplier factor in achieving synergy creation and influencing a sustainable future. This chapter highlights the influence of women empowerment and gender equality on all three pillars of sustainability. Furthermore, this chapter underlines the importance of women empowerment in all industries and politics for addressing the gender inequality problems. This chapter provides recommendations on how to enhance women empowerment to support achievement of all SDGs. Women empowerment based sustainable development policies can influence achievement of the SDGs. This chapter is expected to be useful to the academics and policymakers focusing on achievement of SDGs, sustainability, and sustainable development.