The Africa Gender Innovation Lab’s Core Empowerment Indicators : Developing a Cross-Country Module to Complement Context-Specific Measures

Donald, Aletheia ; Goldstein, Markus

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: AFRICA GENDER POLICY;    GENDER INNOVATION LAB;    WOMEN AND EMPOWERMENT;    WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT;    INDICATOR;   

RP-ID  :  152334

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

To advance economic gender equality inAfrica, the authors first need to know which developmentprograms work to economically empower women. Better data ongender-informed development indicators is imperative fortracking the progress in promoting gender equality,designing interventions to address gender-based constraintsand rigorously evaluating their impact. Measurement ofwomen’s economic empowerment requires a clearconceptualization of what empowerment is and is not. Oneguiding definition that the authors use at the Africa genderinnovation lab (GIL) is economic empowerment as the abilityand power to generate income and accumulate assets, and tocontrol their disposition. Beyond being clear on what isbeing measured, how it is measured also matters - andselecting the best tools for the task is no easy feat. Inimpact evaluations, tailoring measurement to reflect localeconomic arrangements and capture the specific pathway theproject is intending to affect can yield a more precise (anduseful) picture of women’s economic empowerment. On theother hand, systematically tracking the same indicatorsacross projects can provide a broader understanding of therelationship between intermediate and final empowermentoutcomes, as well as between different empowerment domains,such as assets, mobility, time, attitudes, and aspirations.Moreover, practitioners and policymakers have emphasized theneed for a concise set of practical metrics that can beeasily shared and used.