Resource, Agency ,Achievements: Reflections on

the Measurement of Women's Empowerment

(Naila Kabeer)

Prafulla Kumar Nath

(Reading Research Seminar)
 The Author
• Naila Kabeer (Ph D, LSE)
• She worked with LSE, University of Sussex, SOAS
• Area of Interest: Gender Studies, Women’s Studies,
Development Studies, Social Exclusion, Poverty Reduction,
Gender and Development etc.
• Author of 98 papers and 14 books
 Introduction
• An advocacy on behalf of women: a synergy
between feminist goal and development
priorities
• Policy makers: out of familiar traditional
conceptual territories into territory of power
and social injustice
• A limited resources and competing claims
Why, how and in
what context women
• Instrumentalism: combining empowerment empowerment is
with a set of multiplier effect , it requires
translation of feminist insight into discourse important?
of policy
• Quantification is a process of this translation,
hence measurement of empowerment
• Comparison between time or location, impact
of a specific intervention or its implication
 Conceptualizing Empowerment

• “…the processes by which those who have been denied the

ability to make choices acquire such an ability ” (p. 437)
• A process of change
• Choice: possibility of alternatives(first order & second order)
(1st order choice help to frame other 2nd order choices)
• Empowerment refers to the expansion in people's ability to
make strategic life choices in a context where this ability was
previously denied to them
 Ability to Exercise Choice
• Ability to choose : three dimensions

• Resource: material + human + social

(multiplicity of social relationships mediated through institutions, allocation
norms)
• Agency(both positive & negative): ability to define one’s goal
and act upon them(p 438)
( observable actions, motivation, purpose; operationalzed as decision
making);positive and negative meaning in relation to power

• Achievement: empowerment, the outcome

 Inter-connectedness of Power Dimensions

• Three Dimensions: Resource-Agency-Achievement

Precondition Process Outcome

Resource Agency Achievement

• Resource + Agency = Capability(Sen,1985)

• When issue of power relevant? Failure -> individual priority ,
laziness, incompetency Vs. reflecting constraint on the ability
to choose
 Qualifying to Be a Choice
• Choice centrality
• Inequalities in people’s capacity to make choice &
differences in choice they make(denial vs. difference)
• Basic functioning achievement and systematic
gender difference
• General prosperity: reduce gender inequality but
restrict women’s ability to make choice(Razavi,1992)
 Choice: Choosing Not to Choose
• Equation between power and choice: what is chosen
appears to contribute to welfare of those choose it
• What if women choose inequality by themselves
(internalized their social status as person of lesser value)
• Behaviour of women undermine their own
wellbeing, Shaffer(1998)- West Africa
• Pierre Bourdieu(1977)- Doxa
• Empowerment - critical consciousness; no
unquestioning acceptance of the social order
 Measuring Empowerment
• Dimensions: Resource Agency Achievement
• Measuring resource: access to resource
• women are likely to have greater autonomy with land right
(Boserup,1970)
• Such indicators seldom explains the pathway: how access translate
into agency and achievement
• Hindu and Muslim inheritance: access to land as a measure is de-
facto & de-jure
• Go beyond simple ‘access’ indicator
• Sathar & Kazi(1997): access and control- do women have say over
resource of HH/ handling earning, self reliance?
• Jejeebhoy(1997): access, control and decision making
 Measuring Agency
• Measurement of agency: positive as well as negative
agency
(mobility, control of resource, public participation, male violence)
• Studies on South Asia: Hierarchy in decision making
(dichotomous distribution of power, responsibility recognized by family)
Sathar and Kazi(1997): women participate in food purchase only
• Care in selecting and quantifying the decisions
(role in decision making in areas have little consequence, pre-existing gender
role; control & allocation resource)
• Statistical perspective is a simple window of complex
reality- give glimpse of the process(tells little about
subtle negotiation)
 Measuring Achievements
• What to be measured? Distinction between achievement
differentials that signals differences in choice and
inequalities in the ability to make choice
• Kishore(1997)- Egypt- measured empowerment over two
functioning achievements: infant survival and immunization
• She measures empowerment based on three indicators:
1) Direct evidence of empowerment : devaluation of women,
women’s emancipation , sharing of roles, financial autonomy
2) Source of empowerment: asset, education, work before
marriage, control over earning
3)Setting Indicators: family structure, marital advantage,
traditional marriage
 Measuring Achievements cont…
• Becker(1997)-Zimbabwe: finds use of contraceptive is
positively related with HH wealth.
• Women’s role in decision making: Purchase of HH items,
decision to work outside, no of children to have
• Study of Dreze and Sen(1995)- India: women agency is
important
• Finds female literacy reduce child mortality, FLP and female
literacy reduce female mortality
• Education and employment enhances ability to exercise
agency
 Two Studies
• Pitt and Khandker (1995): Group lending program participation
significantly changes reproductive behavior and whether the
gender of the program participant matters. The empirical evidence
presented provides no support for the hypothesis that female
participation in group-based credit programs increases
contraceptive use relative to non-participants . No clear-cut
rationale for the selection of achievement indicators
• Goetz and Sen Gupta(1996): Rural credit program in Bangladesh
contribute to women empowerment. This paper challenges it and
explores variations in the degree to which women borrowers
control their loans directly; the paper finds a significant proportion
of women's loans is controlled by male relatives. Managerial
control of credit as an indicator of empowerment
 Two More Studies
• Rahman(1986): Finds women received loan had higher level
of welfare. Credit reduce but not eliminate gender difference
in intra-household welfare
• Hasemi et al.(1996):Asking whether women's access to credit
could have any transformatory significance for their lives,
regardless of who exercised `managerial control‘. Tried to
understand in term of decision making- purchasing,
economic, assets including land, mobility, job. Paper finds that
women’s access to credit leads to higher economic
contribution, asset holding, purchase power, mobility and
political participation
 Measuring Empowerment: The
Problem of Values
• Values complicate attempts to conceptualize and measure empowerment
• Insider values are captured through variables measuring ‘cultural context’:
difference in culture(resource, agency, achievement)
• Geographic location(dummy variable) explains Gender differentials in
mortality is higher in southern states (Dreze and Sen,1995)
• Dreze and Sen(1995): tells that the structural variable which make up
gender relation in different parts of India are important- informs about
inter-related norms and practices relating to marriage, mobility and
inheritance
• Jejeebhoy(1997) : TN with UP(relation between cultural context and
individual preference)- measures women autonomy in decision making,
mobility access and control over resource
• Female employment significant positive effect autonomy indicators in UP,
but education has weaker impact, in TN employment and education have
strong impact
 Outsider Values and Women Empowerment
(external normative standpoint)
• Virtuous model: associated with instrumental form of gender advocacy-
greater social connectedness. Promotes traits – altruism & dedication to
collective family welfare, thrift & risk aversion, industriousness, a sense of
civic responsibility
• Women’s internalization of their own subordinate status- put the needs of
others in the family before their own
• Lloyd (1995): separation for resource within the family- mother child unit
to form a separate HH with own decision making autonomy- is possible
with employment access
• Indicators of empowerment is context specific- access to resource may
open new possibility, but not in a uniform way
 Limitation
• Measurement and conceptual problem of empowerment
• Implicit assumption of any measurement attempt : somehow
we have to predict the nature and direction of change
• Human agency is indeterminate and unpredictable(one way
antithetical to requirement of measurement)
• Access to resource and opportunity: translating them to
functioning achievement is challenging
• Attempt to predict before intervention violates the essence of
empowerment
 Conclusion

• Ability to choice is central to this paper, but the notion of

choice has been qualified in a number of ways
• condition of choice(1st)- alternative choice and absence of
choice; consequence of choice(2nd)- strategic life choice and
second order choice
• The concept of empowerment reflects interdependence of
individual and structural change
• Structure shapes individual resource, agency & achievement,
they shape individual interest and goal