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Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment: a Critical Analysis of the Third Millennium Development Goal^ Naila Kabeer

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Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment: a Critical Analysis of the Third Millennium Development Goal^ Naila Kabeer 13 Gender equality and women's empowerment: a critical analysis of the third Millennium Development Goal^ Naila Kabeer This article discusses the third Millennium Development Goal (MDG), on gender equality and women's empowerment. It explores the concept of women's empowerment and highlights ways in which the indicators associated with this Goal - on education, employment, and political participation - can contribute to it. ender equality and women's of these resources certainly has the potential empowerment is the third of eight to bring about positive changes in women's GMDGs. It is an intrinsic rather than lives, but, in each case, it is the social an instrumental goal, explicitly valued as an relationships that govern access to the end in itself rather than as an instrument for resource in question that will determine the achieving other goals. Important as extent to which this potential is realised. education is, the translation of this goal into Thus, in each case, there is both positive and the target of eliminating gender disparities negative evidence about the impact of at all levels of education within a given time women's access to these resources on their period is disappointingly narrow. However, lives. There are lessons to be learned from the indicators to monitor progress in both. The article also considers some of the achieving the goal are somewhat more wide- other 'resources' that have been overlooked ranging: by the MDGs, but could be considered equally important for the goal in question. • closing the gender gap in education at all levels; Conceptualising • increasing women's share of wage empowerment: agency, employment in the non-agricultural sector; resources, and achievement • and increasing the proportion of seats First, however, it is important to clarify what is implied by 'empowerment' in this article. held by women in national parliaments. One way of thinking about power is in terms In this article, I interpret this as meaning that of the ability to make choices. To be each of the three 'resources' implied by these disempowered means to be denied choice, indicators - education, employment, and while empowerment refers to the processes political participation - is considered by which those who have been denied the essential to the achievement of gender ability to make choices acquire such an equality and women's empowerment. Each ability. In other words, empowerment entails Gender anti Development Vol. 13, No. 1, March 2005 14 Gender and Development change. People who exercise a great deal of The concept of empowerment can be choice in their lives may be very powerful, explored through three closely interrelated but they are not empowered, in the sense in dimensions: agency, resources, and which I use the term, because they were achievements. Agency represents the never disempowered in the first place. processes by which choices are made and put However, for there to be a real choice, into effect. It is hence central to the concept of certain conditions must be fulfilled: empowerment. Resources are the medium through which agency is exercised; and • There must be alternatives - the ability to achievements refer to the outcomes of agency. have chosen differently. Poverty and Below, each of these dimensions is considered disempowerment generally go hand in in turn, as is their interrelationship in the hand, because an inability to meet one's context of empowerment. basic needs - and the resulting depend- ence on powerful others to do so - rules Agency out the capacity for meaningful choice. Agency has both positive and negative This absence of choice is likely to affect connotations: women and men differently, because gender-related inequalities often • Its positive sense - the 'power to' - refers intensify the effects of poverty. to people's ability to make and act on their own life choices, even in the face of • Alternatives must not only exist, they others' opposition. must also be seen to exist. Power relations are most effective when they are not • Its negative sense - the 'power over' - perceived as such. Cender often operates refers to the capacity of some actors to through the unquestioned acceptance of override the agency of others through, power. Thus women who, for example, for example, the exercise of authority or internalise their lesser claim on the use of violence and other forms of household resources, or accept violence coercion. at the hands of their husbands, do so However, as noted earlier, power also because to behave otherwise is operates in the absence of explicit forms of considered outside the realm of agency. Institutional bias can constrain possibility. These forms of behaviour people's ability to make strategic life choices. could be said to reflect 'choice', but are Cultural or ideological norms may deny really based on the denial of choice. either that inequalities of power exist or that Not all choices are equally relevant to the such inequalities are unjust. Subordinate definition of power. Some have greater groups are likely to accept, and even collude significance than others in terms of their with, their lot in society, if challenging this consequences for people's lives. Strategic life either does not appear possible or carries choices include where to live, whether and heavy personal and social costs. whom to marry, whether to have children, Agency in relation to empowerment, how many children to have, who has therefore, implies not only actively custody over children, freedom of exercising choice, but also doing this in ways movement and association, and so on. These that challenge power relations. Because of help to frame other choices that may be the significance of beliefs and values in important for the quality of one's day-to-day legitimating inequality, a process of life, but do not constitute its defining empowerment often begins from within. It parameters. Finally, the capacity to exercise encompasses not only 'decision making' and strategic choices should not violate this other forms of observable action but also the capacity on the part of others. meaning, motivation, and purpose that Gender equality and women's empowerment 15 individuals bring to their actions; that is, women's sense of independence, rather than their sense of agency. Empowerment is simply meeting survival needs. rooted in how people see themselves - their sense of self-worth. This in turn is critically The interrelationship between agency, bound up with how they are seen by those resources, and achievements around them and by their society. There is a distinction, therefore, between 'passive' forms of agency (action taken when Resources there is little choice), and 'active' agency Resources are the medium through which (purposeful behaviour). There is also a agency is exercised. They are distributed further important distinction between through the various institutions and greater 'effectiveness' of agency, and agency relationships in a society. In institutions, that is 'transformative'. The former relates to certain actors have a privileged position over women's greater efficiency in carrying out others concerning how rules, norms, and their given roles and responsibilities, the conventions are interpreted, as well as how latter to their ability to act on the restrictive they are put into effect. Heads of households, aspects of these roles and responsibilities in chiefs of tribes, directors of firms, managers order to challenge them. For example, in of organisations, and elites within a India, the reduction of overall child community all have decision-making mortality has been associated with rising authority in particular institutions by virtue female literacy. This can be interpreted as the of their position. The way in which resources product of 'effective' agency on the part of are distributed thus depends on the ability to women in their role as mothers. However, define priorities and enforce claims. Equally the reduction of gender disparities in under- importantly, it defines the terms on which five mortality rates has transformative resources are made available. If a woman's implications, because it shows a form of primary form of access to resources is as a agency that is acting against the grain of dependent member of the family, her patriarchal values, which define daughters capacity to make strategic choices is likely to as having less worth than sons. be limited. The focus in this article is on transformative forms of agency on the part Achievements of women and on those achievements that Resources and agency make up people's suggest a greater ability on the part of poor capabilities: that is, their potential for living women to question, analyse, and act on the the lives they want. The term 'achievements' structures of patriarchal constraint in their refers to the extent to which this potential is lives. The three dimensions that make up the realised or fails to be realised; that is, to the concept of empowerment can be seen as outcomes of people's efforts. In relation to representing the pathways through which empowerment, achievements have been these processes of empowerment can occur. considered in terms of both the agency Changes in any one dimension can lead exercised and its consequences. For to changes in others. For instance, example, taking up waged work would be 'achievements' in one sphere of life can form regarded by the MDGs as evidence of the basis on which women seek improve- progress in women's empowerment. ments in other spheres in the future. Policy However, it would be far more likely to changes that provide women with access to constitute such evidence if work was taken new 'resources' may be the result of their up in response to a new opportunity or in collective action to achieve this change. Such search of greater self-reliance, rather than as changes may occur over the life course of an a 'distress sale' of labour.
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