May 02, 2007

How Do You Empower Women?

by Laura Starita

How does society empower a woman? By giving her an education and the ability to use it to generate an income? By allowing her to own property – land, her house, any money she makes, a business? By giving her authority over her own body? By allowing her the right to accept or reject any man who might want her? These seem like pretty basic empowerment strategies, yet some recent efforts focused on empowering women have in fact had the opposite effect.

Take microfinance. Since its inception, microfinance projects have frequenty targeted women as recipients. The reason was both altruistic and self-serving: Women are more likely then men to use income generated through entrepreneurial activities for the betterment of the household as a whole; and they pay back the loan. Some studies also showed that a woman’s ability to contribute to the household made her feel more valuable and empowered. Or did it?

Last week at a microfinance forum hosted by the Social Enterprise Program of the Columbia Business School, Beatriz Armendáriz, a scholar at Harvard, gave a talk on women’s empowerment in microfinance circles. Based on evidence from micro-credit programs in Mexico, her work suggests that microfinance programs that consciensciously exclude men may have a detrimental effect on women’s empowerment. Women participating in such programs in Mexico reported higher instances of spousal abuse, and many reported that their husbands stopped giving them money for household expenses as the result of their participation. The result was a decrease in household spending (with more of the loan going to serve basic needs as opposed to enabling entrepreneurial activities). Programs where husbands and wives participated did not experience these dynamics. Armendáriz is very careful to say that her evidence is anecdotal – not empirical – and that this may well be solely a Mexican phenomenon. But it does serve as a reminder that women live in a broader society that includes men – husbands, fathers, brothers – who also need to perceive that they get something out of a woman’s empowerment if it is to have any impact.

Then, there are also situations where, frankly, “empowerment” is the wrong approach. Nicholas Kristof addressed this in a recent New York Times op-ed piece in which he discussed reader suggestions involving the legalization of prostitution. The argument for legalization is that it legitimizes sex work and empowers sex workers to create unions, get health insurance and use health services, and establish rules regarding the use of condoms, all of which is supposed to decrease HIV transmission and coercion. Except it doesn’t, or not always. Kristof uses a Calcutta red-light district as an example where legalization basically created carte blanche for pimps and traffickers to further exploit young girls and women. Because it was legal it was more accepted. Brothels thrived and brothel-owners earned more money as a result, but that didn’t trickle down to the girls who were forced to work there. Early data show that HIV-infection rates have increased during this period.

Does this mean we should give up on empowering women? Absolutely not. But what seems like simple approaches can have unexpected consequences.

New York Times: Legalizing Prostitution A Solution?