Measuring Women’s Empowerment: Critical Lessons from South America

Women face significant economic, social, and cultural challenges that limit their access to markets, quality jobs, and entrepreneurship and income-generation strategies. The big question among policy makers, development agencies, and researchers in the field of women’s economic empowerment is how to effectively improve women’s economic empowerment through income-generation strategies, training, and social programs. Conventional measures of economic empowerment have used employment, income, and education as proxies. More recently, the research community has recognized the relevance of subjective dimensions such as decision-making power over purchases, bargaining power, subjective perceptions of well-being, and freedom of choice. In this context, the objective of this book is to provide empirical evidence from the South American countries of Colombia, Peru, and Uruguay about our experiences as researchers implementing existing methods and questionnaires used to explain and measure women’s economic empowerment in terms of individual outcomes. Our evidence focuses on the results, effects, impacts, and measurement of economic empowerment. To this end, the book explores both quantitative and qualitative methods to measure the usual proxies for empowerment—such as decision making and labor market participation—and the subjective dimensions of these measurements.
Alma Espino analyzes the results of research that explored women’ subjetctive definitions of labor market participation, occupational segregation, and precarious work. This analysis focuses on the subjective aspects of women’s responses, taking into account a key intersectionality: socioeconomic status and age.

Año: 2018
Nueva Edición
Autoras: Susana Martínez-Restrepo, Laura Ramos-Jaimes, Johanna Yancari Cueva, Alma Espino y Martín Valdivia.