Women’s Empowerment and Economic Development

By: Duflo, Esther

URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:8734&r=ltv

Women’s empowerment and economic development are closely related: in one direction, development alone can play a major role in driving down inequality between men and women; in the other direction, empowering women may benefit development. Does this imply that pushing just one of these two levers would set a virtuous circle in motion? This paper reviews the literature on both sides of the empowerment-development nexus, and argues that the inter-relationships are probably too weak to be self-sustaining, and that continuous policy commitment to equality for its own sake may be needed to bring about equality between men and women.
Keywords: gender equality; women’s empowerment
JEL: D1