economic empowerment research paper

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• Published: 07 April 2023

Barriers and interventions on the way to empower women through financial inclusion: a 2 decades systematic review (2000–2020)

• Omika Bhalla Saluja   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9831-1947 1 ,
• Priyanka Singh 1 &
• Harit Kumar 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  10 , Article number:  148 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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• Development studies

This study aims to reduce ambiguity in theoretical and empirical underpinning by synthesizing various knowledge concepts through a systematic review of barriers and interventions to promote the financial inclusion of women. The surrounding literature is vast, complex, and difficult to comprehend, necessitating frequent reviews. However, due to the sheer size of the literature, such reviews are generally fragmented focusing only on the factors causing the financial exclusion of women while ignoring the interventions that have been discussed all along. Filling up this gap, this study attempts to provide a bird’s-view to systematically connect all the factors as well as mediations found in past studies with the present and future. PRISMA approach has been used to explain various inclusions and exclusions extracted from Scopus & WOS databases with the backward and forward searches of important studies. Collaborative peer review selection with a qualitative synthesis of results is used to explain various barriers and interventions in financial inclusion that affected women’s empowerment in the period 2000–2020. Out of 1740 records identified, 67 studies are found eligible based on systematic screening for detailed investigation. This study has identified patriarchy structures, psychological factors, low income/wages, low financial literacy, low financial accessibility and ethnicity as six prominent barriers and government & corporate programs/policies, microfinance, formal saving accounts & services, cash & asset transfer, self-help groups, and digital inclusion as six leading interventions to summarize the literature and highlight its gaps.

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Introduction.

All over the world, women bear an inadequate load of poverty because of social and structural hurdles. A long-dated body of literature (Klasen, 1999 ; Dollar and Gatti, 1999 ; Klasen and Lamanna, 2009 ; Seguino, 2010 ) emphasizes the effect of numerous facets of gender inequality and economic growth. Females are found to be less educated, less paid, less on ownership and able to exercise much less economic control than their male counterparts. This discrimination, especially in education, hampers their financial development, leading to income inequality (Gonzales et al., 2015 ). Consequently, women suffer from lack of health, education, work opportunities and control over their own lives and selections (Kabeer, 1999 )

Nevertheless, we are observing a critical drive to achieve gender equality, with 193 United Nations member countries committing to achieving the sustainable development goal (SDG 5) of ending gender inequality issues by 2030. Realizing that women’s empowerment benefits not only women but also the sustainable development of the community (Vithanagama, 2016 ), numerous banks all over the world, such as Westpac in Australia, ICICI and SBI in India, Natwest in the UK, and UNITAR in Kenya, have developed products and services designed especially for women, keeping in mind their security, accessibility and affordability. To make the most of this, we need more extensive literature exploration to enable conceptually strong evidence-based solutions catalyzing women’s mobility from poverty and exploitation. Considering the vastness of literature, this can only be addressed by a scientific approach to review, which has been followed in the present study. However, due to the sheer size of the related literature, previous reviews (Holloway et al., 2017 , Kalaitzi et al., 2017 , Roy and Patro, 2022 ) are found to be fragmented as their results focused only on the factors causing the financial exclusion of women while ignoring the interventions that have been discussed all along.

Therefore, filling up this gap our review paper aims to scientifically identifying and amalgamating the related studies between 2000 and 2020 with the objective of (a) identifying the nature of major barriers, (b) exploring the most useful mediations/interventions and trends in research on the financial inclusion (FI) of women to enable the community to design thoughtful interventions for them.

The economic empowerment of women was explored in various dimensions at a much greater pace after 2000 (Priya et al., 2021 ). This inspired us to focus on the research work and other initiatives taken in the following 2 decades, defining our study period 2000–2020. Many influential articles have been published in journals dedicated to women and general development, such as World Development Footnote 1 , Feminist Economics Footnote 2 , Journal of Development Economics Footnote 3 and Gender & Development Footnote 4 . However, despite tremendous progress in the global state of FI, the gap in gender has not changed much since 2011, as a 6% difference still exists in access to Bank accounts among men and women in developing countries (Demirguc-Kunt et al., 2022 ), raising the need for considerate customized mediation.

Early studies on financial empowerment of women

Professor Irene Tinker’s work in women studies in the 1960s and 70s is the foundation for research on women development studies. Her work was instrumental in bringing about the first United Nations International conference on Women in 1975, which is also marked as International women’s year. She also founded the International Centre for Research on Women in 1976, which promotes empirical research to advocate evidence-based ways to empower women and promote gender equality.

Research in the 1970s was characterized by pioneer studies that highlighted the role of women in economic development (Boserup, 1970 ; Tinker, 1976 ), while the 1980s captured the role of females in family structures (Acharya and Bennett, 1981 ), the hardships faced by women in agriculture, which was identified as the single most important employment-generating sector for women (Staudt and Jaquette, 1982 ), and the advancement of land rights for women (Agarwal, 1988 ).

In the 1990s, research gathered pace with numerous studies about the persisting gender inequalities (Tinker, 1990 , 1999 ; Sen, 1990 ; Buvinić and Gupta, 1994 ; Mehra, 1997 , Mayoux, 1998 ; Pande, 1999 ) in cooperatives (Sen, 1990 ), financial services and microlevel entrepreneurship (Mehra and Gammage, 1999 ), and discriminations in agriculture and land rights of women to bring about sustainable development and suggest inclusive policies and practices (Mehra, 1995 ). Providing a much need direction and empirical advancement, Kabeer, 1999 proposed the measurement of women’s empowerment with the identification of the ‘resources’ they own, the ‘agency’ or commanding role they have and their ‘achievement’, which can be understood as the outcome in terms of well-being as the basic constructs to be observed. This is one of the most cited articles in the context of studies about the economic empowerment of women. By the end of the decade, the World Bank’s research report presented a cross-country comparison of the impact of gender inequalities on growth and development (Klasen, 1999 ), thus introducing crucial insights into the geographical diversity of the issue.

Thus, the literature around the financial empowerment of women began with recognizing the crucial role of women in the commercial progress at macro level then; it started to realize their critical role at family level and nature of their contribution at social level, which highlighted gender inequalities. Various dimensions in which such discrimination existed were identified giving scope to future researchers to explore various barriers in the way of women development and to develop suitable policy interventions.

Research methodology

Systematic reviews must follow the preset protocol, which is an advance plan of action specifying the methods to be used in the study and is generally accepted as a research design in social science studies. These rules are crucial to avoid researcher bias in data selection and analysis and increase the reliability of reviews (Xiao and Watson, 2019 ).

In this section, we have described systematic steps undertaken to extract data using specific channels, keywords, inclusion & exclusion criteria and expert selection explained through the PRISMA framework (Fig. 1 ).

Our initial result of 1734 documents (results as on 30 January 2022) was filtered by including only peer reviewed open access, full text English articles on Financial inclusion and women empowerment, resulting in 67 eligible documents. (author created).

Further, the studies thus extracted have been classified and synthesized qualitatively for deeper insights.

Channel used for literature search

Literature for this review has been found using the two sources suggested by Xio and Watson in 2019. These sources are:

Electronic database —Web of Science (WOS) and Scopus. WOS has the longest indexing coverage from 1900 to the present (Li et al., ( 2010 ) while Scopus has an extensive coverage of good quality academic work (Gavel and Iselid, 2008 ). A literature search using both databases despite the overlapping articles is still recommended to avoid missing out high-impact documents (Vieira and Gomes, 2009 ). Extractions from Scopus and WOS for this study were made on January 30, 22.

Backwards and forward search —Articles cited in important studies (highly cited) were traced to identify the inspiration and key background variables, likewise the articles that cited important studies were explored to determine the direction of the flow of research. (Webster and Watson, 2002 ; Haddaway et al., 2022 ). Also, publications by key authors (highly cited) who contributed to the pool of knowledge were identified to ensure that all their important studies were included.

Concepts from the search statement were extended by synonyms, abbreviations, verb forms and related terms to select keywords (Rowley and Slack, 2004 ), as shown in the Table 1 below:

To capture the essence of the study’s research objectives, a dive was made into the Web of Science and Scopus data extracting 751 and 983 records, respectively, based on identified keywords.

PRISMA approach

Data pulled out were filtered using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses—PRISMA (Fig. 1 ), that explains initial screening, determining parameters for inclusion and exclusion and outlining work limitations (Stovold et al., 2014 ; Selçuk, 2019 ).

Inclusion parameters

Publications from 2000–2020.

Open access articles.

Research areas: “Business management, social science, economics, econometrics, accounting and finance”

Exclusion parameters

Incomplete and non-English language publications.

Conference reviews, books, chapters, book reviews, conference papers, and surveys were excluded.

Articles in press.

Collaborative peer review-based exclusion

Expert selection and evaluation

After the electronic screening of records, a double screening was performed by all three authors, where all 89 studies were reviewed by each author individually. Later, 48 studies were screened out as they were not found to be measuring the population (vulnerable women) or outcomes (barriers and interventions) of interest, and 41 studies were finally selected. Additionally, 26 important and relevant studies, including 8 working papers, were identified through backwards and forward searches while reviewing the studies. The included working papers are listed in the Table 2 for reference. After the screening of the literature, a total of 67 articles were documented individually and classified and amalgamated in tables followed by a qualitative synthesis of these studies.

To achieve our research objectives, the selected articles were classified as barrier-related studies, experimental studies and studies evaluating interventions, with a few studies covering more than one dimension (Fig. 2 ).

Venn grouping of the selected studies on the basis of their evaluation of barriers or interventions and the nature of study being experimental or otherwise (author created).

Tabular synthesis

In Table 3 below, we have classified and connected 67 eligible articles based on their contribution to developing different perspectives about barriers and interventions in FI-based women empowerment.

Additionally, twenty-four experimental studies during 2000–2020 are presented in a tabular form (Table 4 ) for review. For the purpose of our study, only the gender-based findings are listed for each study. Owing to the high level of heterogeneity of quantitative data, we could not conduct a meta-analysis; instead, we summarized studies based on their characteristics, factors, mediations and results (Bohren et al., 2015 ).

Qualitative synthesis

The ideas forwarded through the tabular classifications in the studies of FI and WE have been knit to arrive at a thematic discussion about barriers, intervention-based studies and intervention types, which are the three main dimensions of our study.

Barriers to financial empowerment of women

Women have been suppressed and exploited physically, socially, mentally and economically for a long time. Developing countries particularly have a patriarchal set up where women are seen second to men (Nagindrappa and Radhika, 2013 ). While there is a section of society that encourages women empowerment, numerous barriers continue to restrict their advances.

Through our set of identified studies, we have presented below a discussion about various barriers that have been found through the discussion to be interlinked and often cyclical in nature. Figure 3 highlights the scope of our further discussion about the barriers to FI in women.

Six cyclic and interconnected barriers to the FI of women identified through an expert evaluation of selected studies (author created).

Patriarchy structures

Patriarchy is a socio-ideological concept in which men in the family (father, brother, husband, son, etc.) are considered to be superior to women. It is also described as a social arrangement in which men (patriarchs) dominate, oppress and exploit women (Walby, 1989 ).

Delving into the subject of patriarchy, noted author, Naila Kabeer, 2015 pointed to two types of inequities against women. First, gender mediated social class-based violence, rape and other sexual exploitation that women get subject to, and second, domestic violence due to scarcity or poverty and related helplessness of males within the household.

The abuse of women does not stem from scarcity or poverty; even affluent families exploit their daughters by denying them their land and property rights. The Indian government introduced a gender-progressive inheritance law to combat this injustice; despite the reforms, parents continued to deprive their daughters of their rights based on emotions and compensation in the form of higher education and higher dowries (Roy et al., 2015 ). This ill treatment of woman, which starts from her parental abode, continues in her husband’s house, where the ordered unequal power relations developed out of patriarchy further diminish her position. Her production, reproduction and sexuality are controlled by men. This biased treatment of women in the household adversely affects all levels of her social interactions, depriving her of access to resources and opportunities (Manta, 2019 ; Ghosh and Günther, 2018 ) and financial independence (Schaner, 2017 ).

Psychological factors

For obvious reasons, as discussed under the previous heading, many women lose self-confidence and self-esteem and perceive opportunities with fear of failure (Koellinger et al., 2008 ). An experimental study found that females in the lower income group tend to be more risk averse than their male counterparts and think about the negative consequences of not being able to pay back loans. (Manta, 2019 ) Thus, psychological factors must be carefully studied as crucial drivers of the FI of women (Kavita and Suman, 2019 ).

It was found that investment pattern, group experience and age impacted women’s perception about barriers to FI (Lombe et al., 2012 ), and attitude could be explained by personality traits, ability to cope-up, resource utilization, entrepreneurial abilities, organizational control, financial inclusion and economic betterment (Patil and Kokate, 2017 ).

Low income/wages

Although the concepts of income inequality and gender have been discussed separately in the literature, they cannot be compartmentalized, as they keep interacting by the way of inequality in outcomes and opportunities, which are a bye-product of inequalities mainly in education, financial access, social structures and individual perspectives.

With the biasness of patriarchy and her own fallen self-esteem, a woman’s low negotiation and bargaining power leads her to enter into the social contracts where she is able to earn a low level of income and wages compared to men for the same work. This discrimination is popularly referred to as the “glass ceiling” and is experienced by women at all levels of hierarchy. This reminds us of the much-discussed US presidential elections in 2016, where former U.S. Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was subject to misogynistic attacks indicating to her being too weak to serve the nation’s highest office. (Marie et al., 2017 ). Hence, women being exploited at work in terms of work treatment and low wages are no exception. At lower levels of education and power, gendered wage gaps are even more pronounced (Gonzales Martínez et al., 2020 ) and are found to further contribute to financial exclusion (Ghosh and Vinod, 2017 ) and further impede the economic growth of women.

Low financial literacy

With cyclical interconnections with all other barriers to the financial empowerment of women, financial literacy has been much discussed by researchers. Hung, A. et al, 2009 combined all previous definitions of financial literacy to express it as “knowledge of basic economic and financial concepts, as well as the ability to use that knowledge and other financial skills to manage financial resources effectively for a lifetime of financial well-being.” Successive studies have recognized financial awareness, financial knowledge, financial skills, financial attitude and financial behavior as key factors in determining financial literacy (Kumari and Azam, 2019 )

Financial literacy has been supported as one of the critical factors to bring about FI and has greater importance for increasing economic empowerment among women, especially the rural poor (Gonzales et al., 2015 ; Montanari and Bergh, 2019 ; Kumari and Azam, 2019 ; Kaur and Kapuria, 2020 ), who in the lack of it make wrong choices and become vulnerable to high financial risks (Manta, 2019 ). With a lack of financial knowledge and skills, women cannot access financial services and the benefits of the formal financial system, making them economically dependent on men and confined to the vicious circle of low investments, low income and low profits (Manta, 2019 ). Montanari and Bergh, 2019 found that the participation of women in the earnings and decision-making activities of rural cooperatives was almost nonexistent. It insisted that women’s roles in such institutions were restricted to low-cost or free physical labor, while those who benefited were literate and generally educated people.

Spatial diversity and related factors play an important role in the effective communication of financial literacy. Gendered gaps in education were found to be greatly related to the general variation in educational achievement across countries, signifying a shortage of access to education. (Gonzales et al., 2015 ).

A cross-regional comparison showed high-level gendered discrimination based on education level and economic participation in South Asia. Observations in Asian countries indicate lessening of the gendered employment gap with the rise in gendered education levels, while in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), gender gaps in education have decreased, yet women have not obtained opportunities in employment (Klassen and Lamanna, 2009 ). This result hints at the presence of interwoven barriers that are passed on locally.

Overall, a high level of financial literacy is expected to result in greater economic participation of women, where she has an opportunity to express her thoughts and receive suggestions about investment avenues and updates about new profitable products and services, encouraging her towards group effort and informed financial behavior (Ingale and Paluri, 2020 ), which in turn improves her relative wealth (Doss et al., 2020 ) and empowers her.

Low financial accessibility

Access to bank accounts, savings instruments, and other financial amenities may result in women’s better control of their earnings, personal consumption and commercial expenditure (Bernasek, 2003 ), and lack of it pushes her back to obscurity. This was exemplified in an experimental study in Kenya that found that credit constraint prevented women from starting a business and savings constraint further barred them from sustaining it (Brudevold et al., 2017 ).

While trying to develop within the male dominant society, a woman is subject to biases that pull down her self-confidence hurling her into the loop of less education, low employment and low wages, denying her the benefits of access to formal finance such as credit, deposits, insurance, payments and other risk management services (Demirguc-Kunt et al., 2022 ). Findings in an Africa-based study indicate that access to formal finance is mainly driven by individual characteristics such as education, age, income, residence area, employment status, marital status, household size and degree of trust in financial institutions (Soumare et al., 2016 ). Most of the above factors have been identified as obstacles for the FI of women, thus emphasizing women’s overall lack of opportunity to access finance.

Women’s lack of access to financial products and services may also happen because of the absence of a bank branch in rural areas that are not commercially viable for banking. Marginalized women living in underdeveloped far-flung areas with poor infrastructure and roads find it hard to regularly visit bank branches in other areas (Manta, 2019 ), so they avoid banking altogether. This problem was addressed by Mueller et al. in 2020, who worked to develop a travel time model to indicate market accessibility, which is the summary travel time to the nearest state capital city in hours. Such indicators may help in planning inclusion strategies.

Another major reason for women’s lack of access to finance is the lack of commercial interest of banks in disbursing small credit to poor women with no credit history or collateral. Such lending may lead to the building up of non-performing assets and eventually high losses for banks. Therefore, they avoid giving loans to underprivileged women depriving them of economic opportunities. Moreover, the absence of collateral with women is further enhanced by biased traditional property rights (Manta, 2019 ), which denies her resources to build upon a better future.

Looking at the brighter side, ambitious efforts are being made through pathways such as microfinance (Kemp and Berkovitch, 2020 ) and digital inclusion to pull women out of these never-ending and self-building barriers.

In recent studies, ethnicity has emerged as an important factor to be considered while promoting FI in women. Gonzales Martínez et al. ( 2020 ) conducted a controlled laboratory experiment in Bolivia to evaluate whether credit officers in microfinance institutions rejected loan applications on the basis of the interaction of gender and ethnicity of potential buyers. Although the study supported that women were benefitting from microcredit, it indicated discrimination based on ethnicity, as nonindigenous women had twice the probability of getting loan approved, whereas indigenous women had only 1.5 times the probability of getting loan approved compared to men. This idea was supported by another contemporary study (Kaur and Kapuria, 2020 ), suggesting that households headed by females belonging to socially underprivileged backgrounds had a poorer likelihood of obtaining finance from institutions. This suggests that important insights for FI for women can be derived from ethnic studies.

Experimental studies on women’s financial empowerment

As the researchers identified various variables related to the financial empowerment of women through exploratory and descriptive studies, a number of empirical and experimental studies were undertaken to understand the relationship between them. The three main types of interventions identified during our analysis were as follows:

Economic interventions —Involving cash/asset transfer, free bank accounts, free services, subsidies

Social interventions —Comprising family counseling, life skill training, vocational training, awareness programs

Bundled Economic and Social Interventions

Mostly, field experiments measuring the long-term impact of interventions on women’s financial empowerment were conducted. Overall, economic interventions were found to be highly effective in reducing the economic vulnerability of women (Stark et al., 2018 ; Brudevold et al., 2017 ). However, Ismayilova et al., 2018 and Buehren et al., 2015 ) suggested that bundling up economic, social and psychological interventions could make them more constructive.

Interventions implemented for financial empowerment of women

Intervention studies have guided various programs and policies of governments that are essential to support, promote and scale up the literacy, access and growth of financial products and services for women’s empowerment. Realizing the fact that women’s empowerment benefits not only women but also the sustainable development of the community (Vithanagama, 2016 ), numerous banks all over the world, such as Westpac in Australia, ICICI and SBI in India, Natwest in the UK, and UNITAR in Kenya, have developed products and services designed especially for women, keeping in mind their security, accessibility and affordability. Figure 4 defines the scope of our further discussion about six successful interventions in the way of FI of women.

Six most important interventions in empowering women through FI identified through an expert evaluation of selected studies (author created).

Government/corporates programs and policies

The insights developed from the conclusive studies provided governments and public and private enterprises around the world to design suitable inclusive programs, schemes and policies to address the gender gap in finance. Interventions such as government-to-people transfers and the inclusion of post office financial services were evaluated by researchers to comprehend their success or failure in bringing about fairness for women. Swamy ( 2014 ) evaluated the Indian government’s inclusive plans, policies and programs by observing changes in income level, food security, living standards, production levels and asset creation to find that the FI initiatives had a much higher impact on women than on men. These results were cited in many successive studies and laid the groundwork for more intensive inclusive efforts in India.

While acknowledging the imperative need for women’s empowerment for nation building, governments and related organizations all over the world launched ambitious programs to support women. Strategies of the Green Morocco Plan (GMP) were explored by Montanari and Bergh ( 2019 ) to conclude towards the persisting miserable circumstances of women despite planned efforts.

Similar to the actions taken by the states, many private sector companies design schemes, products and programs to promote gender equality for the benefit of their women staff. A Turkish study (Gülsoy and Ustaba, 2019 ) investigated diversity management strategies of companies and found that company leadership played an important role in bringing about equality programs in the workplace. However, they also pointed to the profiteering motive of corporations, which could be served by associating with image building activities, higher productivity and innovation capability, which could result from greater employee satisfaction.

However, some studies claim that many such initiatives had failed because they did not fully anticipate the importance and influence of social institutions such as age, gender, ethnicity, literacy, race, background and religion towards building an enabling environment for inclusion (Gonzales Martínez et al., 2020 ; Kaur and Kapuria, 2020 ).

Microcredit/microfinance

Microfinance helps to bring about the financial independence of poor or exploited women by enabling them to participate in economic activities, improving their status in households and society and reinforcing their power to make decisions (Zhang and Posso, 2017 ; Lall et al., 2017 ). A strong correlation was found between the level of outreach of microfinance institutions and women’s empowerment (Laha and Kuri, 2014 ).

Zhang and Posso ( 2017 ) used case studies to support the constructive role of microfinance to reduce gender inequality. This idea was strengthened by the empirical diary data-based study (Elu et al., 2019 ) in Mozambique, Sub-Saharan Africa, which revealed that being a woman had a positive treatment effect on procuring microcredit. A longitudinal panel study (Khandker and Samad, 2014 ) comparing the effects of microcredit programs in Bangladesh showed that a 10% increase in borrowing by women lowered extreme poverty by 5% and increased the willingness to work of women by 0.46%.

The usefulness of microfinance, microcredit, and microenterprises to promote the empowerment of women has been widely studied (Karlan et al., 2007 ; Swamy, 2014 ; Laha and Kuri, 2014 ; Zhang and Posso, 2017 ), along with the impact of bundling them up with vocational trainings, education or counseling (Kim et al., 2007 ; Buehren et al., 2015 ; Karlan et al., 2007 ). It has been found that both economic and social empowerment programs together were effective in reducing IPV (Kim et al., 2007 ). One such intervention affirms that lifeskills and livelihood training along with microfinance resulted in the likelihood of higher earnings and consumption along with a reduction in teen pregnancy and early marriage (Buehren et al., 2015 ). Likewise, it was found that health knowledge along with microcredit could help in reducing health risks (Karlan et al., 2007 ).

On the other hand, the success of microfinance policy based on outreach was challenged with an argument that institutions and their policies had engaged in a residual rather than the relational understanding of poverty (Johnson, 2013 ). Similarly, it was also questioned by Gonzales et al. in 2020 by highlighting the regressive attitude and biasness of credit officers against indigenous women.

Formal accounts/services

Formal account ownership and its use have been established as an important indicator of FI, and with the support of several research experiments, it has been adopted as an important policy intervention in many countries. Worldwide, 55% of males have a formal account at a financial institution, whereas only 47% of women own or co-own such an account with a gloomier picture in developing countries where women are 28% less likely to have an account at a formal financial institution. (Demirguc-Kunt et al., 2022 ).

Bank accounts result in savings that lead to wealth creation, which is an identified determinant of FI. A study in Kenya found that women made use of savings account far more than men. It observed that there was a 45% increase in savings on business investments among women when commitment-saving bank accounts were opened along with a high fee on withdrawal (Dupas and Robinsion, 2013 ). However, in their successive study (Dupas et al., 2014 ), where instead of a compulsive intervention, the mediation was only to facilitate account opening, it was found that men saved more than women and were more frequent in making transactions.

Hence, the mere opening of bank accounts in the names of women will not ensure their inclusion in the financial mainstream, and their usage of the same over the long run is crucial development. An experimental study found that 22% of such mediated accounts were active in the short run, and only 7% were used in the third year. Many women claim that they use the formal account of someone else in their family so they do not need an account in their own name. In many cases, husbands hold access to the ATM card of their wife, hinting towards the family structures that deprive women of a sense of ownership, making her dependent on other family members in financial matters. (Schaner, 2017 ; Demirguc-Kunt et al., 2022 ).

On the brighter side, it was found that with the sense of ownership of wealth, women tend to appreciate themselves by spending on their personal needs, elevating their sense of self-worth. There was a 40% increase in women’s personal expenditure (Dupas and Robinsion, 2013 ) and an increase in education and health after the account opening (Prina, 2015 ). Additionally, the ATM cards issued along with bank accounts were found to be quite popular among married couples, as transactions increased up to 62% in the short run and 68% in the long run. It was found to enable wives to participate in joint financial decisions along with their husbands (Schaner, 2017 ). These results reflect the positive impact of free account opening and subsidized or free financial services on inclusion but also emphasize the need to ensure that the benefits reach out to the targeted vulnerable women and have long-term effects.

Cash/asset transfer program

CTs benefit women through financial well-being, economic security and emotional well-being, leading to a reduction in intimate partner violence and significant improvement in women’s status and relationships in the family. (Ismayilova et al., 2018 ; Buller et al., 2018 )

Studies have supported adding cognitive and emotive features such as training, counseling and coaching with economic strategies in policy interventions to empower women (Ismayilova et al., 2018 ; Brudevold et al., 2017 ). When CT intervention was compared with the one coupled with life skill training, it was found that sole cash transfers were more useful in increasing the income of women in the short run only, whereas the likelihood of employment could be increased with life skill training and CT bundled together (Brudevold et al., 2017 ). An interesting study to find the real beneficiaries of CT in the long run found that benefits were largely retained by women, as they had less pressure to share their income with their relatives on the pretext that their earning options were limited (Squires, 2018 ).

The impact of productive asset transfer (livestock) in the name of women was explored in an experimental setting in Bangladesh. It revealed that although women’s asset ownership increased significantly, the real beneficiaries were men instead of women (“fly paper effect”), male sole ownership in agriculture and land increased significantly after the intervention (Roy et al., 2015 ). This reaffirms the earlier made point about the way dowry benefits are reaped by the male members.

The usefulness of CT or asset transfer cannot be denied in the short run, where lack of cash or assets averts women from starting a business, but their limitation to save prevents them from sustaining the benefits in the long run (Brudevold et al., 2017 ).

Self-help groups (SHG), philanthropy, NGOs

SHGs are informal groups of rural women formed to socially and economically support each other with a sense of belongingness and responsibility among themselves. These groups foster FI along with the social empowerment of women. Members join the SHG mainly to obtain financial support to meet basic needs, especially in the case of emergency (Nagaraj and Sundaram, 2017 ).

Most SHG members are young in age, are less educated, have less income and lack any kind of previous experience in handling money. After their SHG experience, women have been found to be managing cash (Kabeer, 2011 ; Maclean, 2012 ; Ramachandar and Pelto, 2009 ), although some studies have found that even after SHG training, there was no impact on asset formation or income of participants (Deininger and Liu, 2013 ), women remained unsure and pressurized about their financial decisions, especially in the presence of a community member (Maclean, 2012 ; Ramachandar and Pelto, 2009 ).

It was found that when the members become old in the group, they start realizing their social responsibilities, which transforms their social participation and builds up their confidence in making decisions (Mehta et al., 2011 ), enabling them to fight against exploitation at the family or societal level.

Many philanthropists and NGOs have dedicated themselves to the cause of women’s empowerment. The BOMA project in Kenya, which works to achieve the UN sustainable development goals of poverty reduction, reducing gender inequality and mitigating the effects of climate change, has been instrumental in increasing income and savings (Tiwari et al., 2019 ). In 2019, Hendriks studied the logic and strategy of the functioning of one such philanthropic Bill & Melinda Gates foundation that aims to reduce the gender gap through FI, while in 2020, Kemp and Berkovitch worked to study feminist NGOs in Israel.

Digital inclusion

Gender was identified as a key variable in consumer readiness in adopting mobile payment services and strategizing market segmentation (Humbani and Wiese, 2018 ). Digital financial services have been discussed in papers as one of the most effective FI models (Arnold and Gammage, 2019 , Natile, 2019 ), promising greater privacy, confidentiality and control of women over their finances (Duflo, 2012 ). An influential African study by Efobi et al. in 2018 found a strong positive relationship between progressions in information technology through mobile & internet penetration and the participation of women in the economy.

With the advent of mobile banking, many women who cannot reach out to financial institutions have been linked to financial services and are more likely to save than men, even with limited amounts (Ouma et al., 2017 ), gaining greater flexibility to spend on household expenditures and child welfare measures (Duflo, 2012 ). In 2016, Suri and Jack found that Kenyan mobile money system M-PESA was able to lift 194,000 households, which was 2% of the total households, out of poverty, with a significant positive impact in female households driven by higher savings and better employment of women. Acknowledging its phenomenal reach, the drawbacks and efficiencies of mobile banking were discussed further to promote FI (Humbani and Wiese, 2018 ; Arnold and Gammage, 2019 ). Prospects of digitizing G2P payments were evaluated (Klapper and Singer, 2017 ) to find that with the backing of government, there could be a dramatic reduction in costs, higher efficiencies, transparency and greater acceptance of technology.

Deliberating imperfections, on the one hand, complex financial products and services are being launched every other day; on the other hand, almost 80% of women in low-income economies still earn their wages in cash (Klapper and Dutt, 2015 ). Inherent inequalities in financial access (Klapper and Dutt, 2015 ), innumeracy, illiteracy and unfamiliarity with technology (Tiwari et al., 2019 ) are barriers to women’s digital FI. Reiterating the above idea, the exploration of inclusionary arrangements found the exploitation of the M-PESA program to identify market opportunities causing its failure to adopt the redistributive measures necessary for the benefit of society (Natile, 2019 ). This suggests that there is a need for a very well-planned, systematic digital intervention with higher transparency, sensitivity and awareness.

Our systematic study seeks to explore its research objectives through three dimensions viz. barriers, intervention types and intervention/experimental studies (Fig. 2 ). The results obtained with regards to each dimension have been further discussed to present the contribution of our work.

Out of 67 related studies 24 studies provided us insights about the barriers in the way to financial Inclusion of women. A tabular synthesis of these studies resulted in the identification of six barriers, which were further qualitatively synthesized to find that they were interlinked and often cyclical in nature. We found that the study conducted for understanding one barrier led the way to explore other barrier. The long-term ill treatment of women due to patriarchy structures induce low self-esteem and other psychological barriers, which in turn reduce their negotiation power and more often than not they have to settle for low income and wages coupled with low literacy levels than their male counterparts. Low finances, economic power and low literacy directly affect their decision-making, leadership and opportunities. With fewer opportunities to grow, females get lesser access to finance and the women who have been underprivileged on account of their ethnicity face greater challenges in accessing finance their development. Lack of financial strength and literacy keeps pushing women into the patriarchy structures and hence the viscous cycle of disempowering women continues.

The results obtained from the tabular synthesis of 34 intervention studies, identified Government/Corporates programs and policies, Microcredit/Microfinance, Formal accounts/services, Cash/asset transfer program, Self-Help Groups (SHG), Philanthropy, NGOs and Digital Inclusion as the main interventions. These interventions have been individually documented to get insights about the related studies. The qualitative results suggest that there is a significant role of public and social institutions, related experiences, economic nature of intervention and technical advancement in financial services in fostering financial empowerment of women.

Also, we have presented a tabular synthesis of 24 intervention or experimental studies, which give an insight about the kind of intervention, the key findings and the research methodology that has been adopted in previous studies (Table 4 ). The findings from intervention studies suggest that economic interventions alone or bundled with social interventions were useful in financially empowering women.

Previous studies such as Holloway et al. ( 2017 ) and Kalaitzi et al. ( 2017 ) have used thematic mapping and traditional review methods to approach similar problem. Holloway et al. ( 2017 ) studied the impact of various saving, credit, payments and insurance products on women empowerment and found that there are numerous demand and supply-side barriers, some of which could be overcome by product design features. The study suggested that a greater degree of control and privacy surrounding women’s income and expenditure decision could boost their inclusion in the financial system. Our study results supports this finding especially while planning financial inclusion of women through digital ways where transparency, sensitivity and awareness must be considered as important variables.

Kalaitzi et al. ( 2017 ) identified 26 barriers to women leadership in Healthcare, Academia and Business, some of which were common while some were found to be starkly different across sectors. A systematic review by Roy and Patro ( 2022) synthesized evidence from 73 studies to find out that demand side factors were the main cause of gender-based exclusion. Unlike these studies, we have not only identified the different types of barriers, but also have attempted to understand the nature of these barriers, which has led to physical, social, mental, economic exploitation and overall suppression of women since a very long time. The focus of previous studies was only on the factors and the importance of the FI of women, giving us the opportunity to discuss the subject at a comprehensive level by including related interventions. Also, our findings about the experimental studies have not been presented in former studies making our contribution significant in women studies.

Thus, filling up the gaps, we have discussed the nature of six main barriers, summarized 24 key experimental studies and have clearly identified six major interventions that have been applied in the first 2 decades of the twenty-first century to provide a bird’s-view to systematically connect the factors as well as mediations found in past studies with the present and future.

However, as mentioned earlier in the result section of this paper, the presence of heterogeneity of the quantitative studies prevented us from conducting a meta-analysis, which we have tried to compensate with a rigorous synthesis of results from various studies. Sincere efforts have been made to include all the major contributors to the research topic, but due to the vastness of the subject and the limitation of our research design, some insightful studies may have been omitted from the discussion. Nevertheless, we believe that the current work covers inputs from many imminent studies, such as Kabeer ( 2011 ), Kabeer and Sweetman ( 2015 ), Beck et al. ( 2007 ), Brudevold et al. ( 2017 ), Swamy ( 2014 ), Efobi et al. ( 2018 ), Klapper and Dutt, ( 2015 ), and Dupas and Robinsion ( 2013 ) is able to provide the readers with a comprehensive, yet quick overview of the literature and its gaps while contributing to the development of useful interventions to achieve the sustainability goal of gender equality by 2030.

Practical implications

Considering the vastness of the subject and the need for urgent attention as the fifth sustainability goal, a quick understanding to formulate useful policies, programs and other interventions is much needed. Therefore, the findings of our study can provide useful insights to policy makers.

The barriers to financial Inclusion of women have been found to be inter-related and cyclical. This implies that a constant endeavor to eradicate even one such hurdle will have a multifold effect and will be useful in removing others. On the flip side, if attention is not paid to remove even one of these hurdles, they will keep occurring and obstructing the way of women’s development. Therefore, long-term policy interventions with continuous monitoring of efforts are required to bring about inclusive financial growth of women.

We have found through our exploration of intervention studies (Table 3 ) that though Government-to-people transfers (G2P), such as pensions, conditional cash transfers, financial literacy programs, microfinance, other socioeconomic transfers and products & services of public facility institutions such as post-offices, have resulted in the growth of savings and thereby higher entrepreneurship among women, but the related experiences of poor women determine their likelihood of connecting with the system in the long run. Hence, merely designing the intervention is not enough, and careful monitoring of such interventions must be done to achieve the objectives.

We have also found that SHGs, NGOs and other local communities enable women to become a part of the value chain and the familiarity and trust of vulnerable women in such organizations gives them a comparative advantage over other formal institutions. Therefore, as these formal or informal setups help women to get past the psychological hurdles, they must be included in all programs devised for including women in the financial system.

Moreover, we have found digital inclusion to be the most promising intervention with the widest range and prospects to connect with left-behind poor women. This calls for a sensitive customized approach keeping in mind the convenience of vulnerable and less educated women in adapting to the digital ways.

Furthermore, through our exploration of experimental studies (Table 4 ) we have found that economic interventions are more useful than social interventions in promoting entrepreneurship, savings, consumption and general betterment of the lifestyle of women. However, the most effective programs are those in which both economic and social components are incorporated. This insight can be utilized towards designing valuable mediations to support entrepreneurship among women, keeping in view that such intervention should not just be on papers, but must actually reach to the beneficiary and be utilized towards the identified cause only.

Future scope for research

The 67 studies discussed in this work have exposed many gaps in the related literature. As we have found that all the barriers are inter-related and cyclical, there is a need to break the cycle. Our findings can help future researchers to develop deeper insights about each of the highlighted barrier. A few future areas for research have been identified as:

Meaningful and important insights can be derived from ethnic studies to measure the impact of cultural institutions such as women’s dress codes and their expected public behavior on the level of their economic participation.

Exploration of behavioral irrationality of rural women towards financial products and services.

Biasness at the workplace in terms of income, authority and leadership should be explored further to devise suitable interventions.

The perception, attitude, and behavior of women towards finance have been evaluated in many studies, but not much has been discussed to understand the supply-side psychological hurdles at the individual level in disbursal of finance.

Likewise, our results suggest and discuss the evaluation of most effective interventions, which can help researchers to understand the way these mediations have developed so far and the way in which they can be improvised. Some future areas, which may be explored in theory may be:

The usefulness of online education to promote financial literacy and awareness in the remote corners of countries and across countries.

The lack of discussion about insurance products to mitigate risk and encourage investments among women can be addressed.

There is a need to discuss security, transparency and awareness in digital financial services along with thoughtfully designing simpler digital interfaces, tools and devices customized for women.

Moreover, as the problem of the FI of women has evidently been discussed primarily in developing nations, there is a need for exploration studies about poor or indigenous women in developed countries.

Thus, offering a deeper insight to the subject of Women empowerment through Financial Inclusion, we have identified six prominent barriers to FI of women: patriarchy structures, psychological factors, low income/wages, low financial literacy, low financial accessibility and ethnicity and have uniquely found that these barriers are interconnected with cyclical impact, resulting in redistribution effects that further widen the gaps between the privileged and the underprivileged, which must be considered while designing interventions in future.

Similarly, we have recognized six main interventions that have been introduced thus far: government and corporate programs/policies, microfinance, formal saving accounts/services, cash or asset transfer, self-help groups and digital inclusion and have presented various methods and findings of related experimental researches to provide direction for future inquiry. The consequences, appreciation and criticism of various interventions have been documented in the results and discussion to provide useful vision for future policy or theoretic implementation. Overall, this study has exclusively presented a summary of the barriers and interventions, which have been inquired into during 2000–2020 thereby contributing to achieving sustainable development goal (SDG 5) of ending gender inequality issues by 2030.

Data availability

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article and its supplementary information file.

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Saluja, O.B., Singh, P. & Kumar, H. Barriers and interventions on the way to empower women through financial inclusion: a 2 decades systematic review (2000–2020). Humanit Soc Sci Commun 10 , 148 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-01640-y

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A better life everyone can afford: Lifting a quarter billion people to economic empowerment

At a glance

• The “empowerment line” gauges progress toward a world in which everyone can meet their essential needs. This threshold, set well above the international poverty line, is the point at which people can afford a standard basket of essential goods and services and begin to save.
• Economic growth is rapidly improving living standards in lower- and middle-income countries, but this effect stalls out in advanced economies. In wealthier countries, higher costs and inequality prevent about 20 percent of the population on average from reaching full economic empowerment.
• Struggling households benefit from higher incomes only when those gains translate into greater purchasing power. Comparing economies at every step of the income ladder reveals that the essentials generally become more expensive as countries become wealthier—and these cost increases tend to match or exceed income gains for the bottom 20 percent of households. Housing is the biggest affordability issue for higher- and middle-income economies; food costs are an important differentiator elsewhere.
• If all countries could lower the costs of essential goods and services to match peers with better affordability at the same income level, almost a quarter billion additional people could reach the empowerment line. These outperformers show that it is possible to limit household expenditures on basic goods and services.
• While affordability is influenced by policy and the delivery of public services, the private sector has scope to act. In addition to easing cost burdens for their own workforces and across their value chains, businesses can develop affordable offerings in housing, energy, food, healthcare, and communication. They can find opportunities to pass on productivity-driven savings to consumers and expand low-cost business models into underserved regions and populations.

High costs for the necessities of life have millions feeling as if they can’t get ahead. Postpandemic inflation has given prominence to a structural issue that’s been brewing for years: the cost of the basics is out of reach for too many households.

The empowerment line, introduced in previous research by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), offers a way for public- and private-sector leaders to monitor this issue. It considers the daily expenditure needed to afford a basket of essential goods and services that constitute a frugal but decent living standard (see sidebar, “What is the empowerment line?”). A sharply higher standard than the international poverty line, it is designed to encompass those who are not formally counted as poor but are still unable to make ends meet. As of 2020, 9 percent of the global population lived in extreme poverty, while 60 percent lived below the empowerment line. 1 “Poverty—overview,” World Bank, October 2023; and From poverty to empowerment: Raising the bar for sustainable and inclusive growth , McKinsey Global Institute, August 2023.

This analysis extends our earlier research by analyzing empowerment outcomes for countries of differing income levels. It also highlights a major issue that needs to be tackled to unlock further progress: affordability. Comparing countries, we see the cost of the basics rising in tandem with GDP per capita. Those cost increases largely or wholly eat up the additional income that goes to the bottom 20 percent of the population when a country attains a higher rung on the income ladder. That pattern is one of the factors preventing wealthier countries from achieving universal economic empowerment.

Much of the debate on how to help struggling households centers on boosting incomes and reducing inequality. But the puzzle can’t be solved in full without addressing the cost side of the ledger as well. Indeed, if countries with more expensive empowerment baskets could lower those costs to match better-performing peers of similar income levels, some 230 million additional people would be above the empowerment line today. The global population that is fully empowered would grow by about three percentage points.

In advanced and emerging economies alike, the high cost of housing is often the biggest factor keeping a decent standard of living out of reach. In lower-income countries, food costs are also a pressing issue. This creates real stress, since the costs of essential goods and services have been rising faster than overall inflation—and lower-income households devote a larger share of their budget to these items. 2 See The social contract in the 21st century , McKinsey Global Institute, February 2020; and Jakub Caisl et al., The uneven impact of high inflation , OECD Papers on Well-being and Inequalities, working paper number 18, October 2023. Putting essentials within reach for everyone would require addressing structural issues, including low productivity growth in sectors such as education and construction, constraints on access and supply, and low levels of competition.

A broad “affordability agenda” could relieve at least part of the burden for households on the margins. Policies and public investment would need to be part of the answer—but the private sector can make a real difference, too. In tackling this issue, companies may find opportunities to boost employee productivity, gain a labor cost advantage, and find new sources of revenue in underserved markets.

Economic empowerment rises with income, but only to a certain point

What is the empowerment line.

The empowerment line is MGI’s estimate of the expenditure required for every individual in a given country to access nutritious food, housing and energy, safe water, transportation, healthcare, education, clothing, and communication, with some minimum spending on recreation or community activities. It implies a frugal life but enables people to focus on more than mere survival.

This is the point at which people can begin to meet some of their material wants and exercise more choices about where and how they live. Critically, the empowerment line also includes a small margin for savings to reduce the risk of falling back into poverty; only beyond this point can people start to build wealth. At a societal level, lifting people meaningfully above poverty is correlated with improved metrics ranging from reduced childhood mortality and longer life expectancy to additional years of schooling and expanded digital and financial inclusion. 1 From poverty to empowerment: Raising the bar for sustainable and inclusive growth , McKinsey Global Institute, August 2023.

Empowerment extends and complements the “living wage” concept that has gained traction for employers and workers to evaluate wages against living costs. Because it is based on consumption, however, it can apply to the entire population (including children, the elderly, and people with disabilities or caregiving responsibilities), not only workers. It is agnostic as to the source of spending power; in addition to reflecting earned wages, it captures spending by people relying on government transfers and retirees spending down accumulated lifetime savings.

To calculate the empowerment line, we use detailed 2022 and 2023 cost-of-living data from the WageIndicator Foundation, which conducts surveys to understand spending on a defined basket of essential goods and services (not the economy-wide basket used in measures of purchasing-power parity, or PPP). For example, housing costs are for a rented two-bedroom apartment in an average urban area, while food costs are for a balanced diet making up 2,100 calories per day (accounting for food differences across economies). We also layer in buffers for savings and social participation. 2 We calculate social participation as 10 percent of basic needs, based on WageIndicator Foundation data. That includes the cost of recreation, hobbies, or enrichment activities. It also serves as a buffer to account for any expenses specific to individual countries that may not be reflected in the global framework. We also include a savings buffer equal to 5 percent of the total empowerment basket. In higher-income economies, housing tends to make up the largest share of the basket (about 40 percent), while food makes up the largest share (approximately 35 percent) in lower-income countries.

These data already reflect the in-kind services provided in a given country. Education or healthcare that is fully provided by the government, for example, lowers the empowerment line. Because the data are based on household surveys, the perception of a safety net also plays a role; public programs that do not fully reach their intended populations may not be fully reflected in empowerment line figures, and households may not consider rebates or tax credits when providing an estimate of their out-of-pocket costs.

Empowerment costs may differ across countries because of varying production costs of essentials, profit margins for producers, and the extent (and effectiveness) of subsidies and other in-kind social benefits. Because details about those components of the empowerment line cannot be discerned from survey data alone, it is beyond the scope of this research to disaggregate them, although that would be a promising area for future research.

In this research, the term “affordability” describes whether it takes relatively high or low expenditures by households to acquire the essential goods and services in the empowerment basket, based on comparing costs across all countries in the same income band. In addition to capturing differences in production costs, this approach captures differences in whether households must pay for goods and services out of their net income or whether they are publicly provided. For example, fully tax-funded education systems are more “affordable” than alternative models that charge fees.

Note that for a subset of 20 of the lowest-income countries, our analysis sets the empowerment line at a standard “floor” of $12 per person per day in PPP terms rather than using a bottom-up calculation of local costs. Although the empowerment basket may actually cost less than $12 in these countries today, this choice reflects the aspiration to set an ambitious global target for minimum living standards, and this requires a higher adjustment in the poorest countries, enabling quality improvements where needed.

Having established the empowerment line, we can then calculate the share of population below it in each country, using consumption data from Oxford Economics and distribution data from World Data Lab, which gets us to a daily per capita spending figure for each country. Like the empowerment line itself, daily spending figures reflect impacts from cash transfers and public income-assistance programs.

There is broad agreement that living wage data quality and methodology (which our research builds on) could be improved, and we acknowledge these limitations. 3 Carlotta Balestra, Donald Hirsch, and Daniel Vaughan-Whitehead, Living wages in context: A comparative analysis for OECD countries , OECD Papers on Well-being and Inequalities, working paper number 13, OECD, 2023. In addition, we estimate the empowerment line at the national level, which does not reflect substantial variations within countries; economic empowerment requires higher levels of consumption in a booming city than in a small rural town, for example. The estimates are calculated on a per capita basis, but at the household level, spending patterns will vary with the number and characteristics (such as work status) of household members.

Most countries gauge progress in living standards by looking at GDP per capita or household income, but that doesn’t fully reflect what it takes to get by in a given place. Progress toward economic inclusion requires factoring in both what households bring in and what they must pay out. The empowerment line captures those outlays. It can shed light on whether people have sufficient spending power to meet all their fundamental needs (see sidebar “What is the empowerment line?”).

Globally, growth fuels economic empowerment

In perhaps the greatest achievement of modern times, more than a billion people have exited extreme poverty over the past three decades. Most were in the fastest-growing lower- and middle-income economies, including China and India. 3 From 1990 to 2013, for example, 1.1 billion people emerged from extreme poverty globally, more than 90 percent of them from countries whose GDP grew at least 5 percent per year. See Outperformers: High-growth emerging economies and the companies that propel them , McKinsey Global Institute, September 2018; and Four decades of poverty reduction in China , World Bank, 2022. This has produced substantial global progress in human development outcomes such as child mortality and average years of schooling. 4 “Children: Improving survival and well-being,” World Health Organization, September 2020; and World development report 2018: Learning to realize education’s promise , World Bank, 2017.

A point-in-time view of 120 countries shows that those with higher average incomes typically have larger shares of the population above the empowerment line. Climbing the income ladder is critical: only about 20 percent of the population is fully empowered in lower-income economies, but that share increases to roughly 50 percent in middle-income economies and about 80 percent in higher-income economies. At the global level, this is the crux of the matter, since more than 4.7 billion people had not yet reached the empowerment line as of 2020. 5 From poverty to empowerment: Raising the bar for sustainable and inclusive growth , McKinsey Global Institute, August 2023.

Note that our analysis uses a snapshot of 2022 data and does not track the relationship between GDP per capita and empowerment over time. But academic literature, as well as our own analysis of related metrics, indicates that the point-in-time results across countries also apply to individual countries as they grow. Economic growth is how a country reaches a higher rung on the income ladder—and it is the most powerful mechanism for improving living standards in lower- and middle-income economies. 6 The relationship between growth and well-being is well documented. The UN’s Multidimensional Poverty Index (which combines measures of health, education, and living standards) and the EU’s material deprivation rate (which tracks the share of the population that cannot afford items needed to lead an adequate life) finds a positive, statistically significant relationship between per capita GDP growth and improved outcomes in these measures across countries. See also Maria Emma Santos, Carlos Dabus, and Fernando Delbianco, “Growth and poverty revisited from a multidimensional perspective,” Journal of Development Studies , volume 55, issue 2, 2019; this research finds that a 1 percent increase in the economic growth rate leads to a 0.6 percent reduction in the multidimensional poverty index. The relationship between the EU’s material deprivation rate and per capita GDP growth is based on data from Eurostat as of March 2024.

MGI’s previous research shows how faster productivity-driven growth could lift incomes and transform lives on a massive scale. Ramping up growth is no easy feat, however. It involves not only maintaining baseline growth in the face of headwinds but also boosting productivity, which requires greater competition, innovation, and labor mobilization. 7 Investing in productivity growth , McKinsey Global Institute, March 2024. While growth increases incomes on average, ensuring that those below the empowerment line share in the benefits depends on employers creating better jobs and training workers to step into them. This dynamic does not happen without intentional and well-coordinated effort.

In economies where growth has collapsed, the consequences for vulnerable households are immediately apparent. With its long-term economic challenges unresolved, Argentina has recently experienced both stagnation and skyrocketing inflation, pushing many middle- and working-class families into precarious circumstances. 8 Déborah Rey, “Rising poverty grips Argentina as runaway inflation takes its toll,” Associated Press, September 27, 2023. A serious hunger crisis has developed in Pakistan, where growth ground to a halt in 2023 amid a similar inflationary spiral. 9 Abid Hussain, “Why is Pakistan ranked 99th on the Global Hunger Index?” Al Jazeera, July 26, 2023. For more on the broader relationship between downturns in growth and poverty, see, for example, Correcting course: Poverty and shared prosperity 2022 , World Bank, 2022; Stephen N. Broadberry and John Joseph Wallis, Growing, shrinking, and long-run economic performance: Historical perspectives on economic development , NBER working paper number 23333, 2017; and Heidi Shierholz and Elise Gould, Poverty and income trends paint a bleak picture for working families , Economic Policy Institute, September 2010. This underscores the link between growth and living standards.

Higher average incomes don’t translate into economic empowerment for everyone in wealthier economies

While higher income levels correlate with better empowerment outcomes, that relationship dissolves at the top of the income ladder, once countries exceed about $20,000 in GDP per capita (Exhibit 1). Reinforcing what we see from this static view, research has found a similar pattern over time in Europe. In the continent’s lower-income economies, there is a positive, statistically significant relationship between growth and lower material deprivation, but that relationship does not hold for its higher-income economies. 10 Based on our analysis, a 1 percent growth rate correlates with a four-percentage-point improvement in material deprivation rates in lower-income European economies. Based on March 2024 Eurostat data.

Image description:

A scatterplot shows 120 dots representing countries, with the share of population above the empowerment line on the vertical scale and GDP per capita on the horizontal scale, ranging from zero to $125,000. The dots are mostly bunched at the far left but trend sharply upward as they near $20,000 on the horizontal scale, but that trends starts flattening to the right of $20,000. Dots are organized into three categories: first, 44 countries with income below $5,000 and empowerment ranging from nearly 0% to 50%; second, 40 countries with income from $5,000 to $20,000 and empowerment ranging from about 25% to 75%; and third, 36 countries with income above $20,000 and empowerment ranging from about 55% to 90%.

End of image description.

In short, very high levels of general prosperity are not a guarantee of baseline security for everyone. For example, although GDP per capita is more than three times higher in Switzerland than in Spain (in USD terms), their shares of the population below the empowerment line are similar. Even the wealthiest economies have not lifted the last 20 percent or so of the population above the line.

Boosting incomes is the biggest determinant of empowerment for much of the world, but not in wealthier countries. In fact, differences in GDP per capita alone explain 79 percent of the variations in empowerment outcomes across lower-income economies and 43 percent across the middle-income segment. 11 We define lower-income countries as those with GDP per capita of less than $5,000 and middle-income countries as those with GDP per capita of $5,000 to $20,000. For more on our country sample and the regression used to determine the share of variation explained by income, see the technical appendix. For these two groups of countries—which happen to be home to more than 85 percent of the world’s population—reaching the next rung on the income ladder is key. That is achieved through economic growth, which creates jobs, increases household incomes, and generally expands access to goods and services. However, differing levels of GDP per capita explain less than 15 percent of the differences in empowerment outcomes across the wealthiest countries (Exhibit 2).

A vertical bar chart plots the percentage of explanatory power that certain factors have in people’s ability to reach economic empowerment across 120 countries, with bars for the three income groups introduced in the previous exhibit. GDP per capita alone has explanatory power that descends as income grows, with bars shrinking from 79% in lower-income countries to 14% in high-income countries. But in contrast, GDP per capita combined with factors of affordability and inequality have higher and rising explanatory power, from 85% in lower-income countries to 95% in higher income countries.

Globally, countries with similar levels of GDP per capita have notably different shares of their populations above the empowerment line; the variations are 20 percentage points on average. These differences matter: keeping income levels constant, if all countries matched the empowerment outcomes of their best-performing peers, 360 million more people would be above the line today. 12 A country’s peers are defined as other countries within an income range of +/- 25 percent. For more on this calculation, see the technical appendix.

What else is at work? In short, inequality (the way that national income and wealth are distributed) and affordability (how far it goes, especially for those at the bottom). Inequality of wealth and income leaves the poorest segments without the means to fully meet their needs, even in countries where the average income is high. 13 Note that the data underlying our analysis measure individual private consumption and how it is distributed across population deciles. In addition to inequality, other factors, such as the propensity to spend, may be at work. For broader research on inequality, see Thomas Piketty and Arthur Goldhammer, Capital in the twenty-first century , Belknap Press, 2014; and Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, “The rise of income and wealth inequality in America: Evidence from distributional macroeconomic accounts,” Journal of Economic Perspectives , volume 34, number 4, fall 2020. Beyond whether people have spending power, we also have to look at how much they need to pay out. We use the term “affordability” to describe whether the household expenditures needed to obtain the goods and services in the empowerment basket are relatively high or low for a given country’s income level.

For higher-income economies, affordability and inequality together explain an additional 80 percentage points of the variation in empowerment outcomes. Both of these factors individually have greater explanatory power then GDP per capita alone. While it's important to focus on what people at the bottom earn, what households need to spend to acquire the basics merits attention, too. In lower- and middle-income economies, growth still matters above all—but the cost of the basics is even more important to empowerment outcomes than distributional effects. 14 For more on the methodology behind this finding, see the technical appendix.

Estimating the empowerment line across countries

We acknowledge the difficulty of making precise comparisons across countries when looking at issues related to poverty and consumption. For example, economic empowerment implies spending $41 per person per day in the Netherlands and $24 in Japan. Part of this difference comes down to varying general price levels. Accounting for this, however, explains less than 40 percent of the difference between these two countries. In PPP terms, the cost of empowerment would be $47 PPP in the Netherlands and only $29 PPP In Japan. 1 Using World Bank International Comparison Program PPPs for households’ final consumption expenditures. More broadly, a similar trend is observed for national extreme poverty lines expressed in 2017 PPP, which also rise in line with GDP per capita. See Assessing the impact of the 2017 PPPs on the International Poverty Line and global poverty , policy research working paper number 9941, World Bank, 2022. PPP is meant to provide a common benchmark, but it has limitations in the context of this research.

This is explained by several factors, as follows:

• First, essential goods and services in the empowerment basket vary based on local contexts and the extent of public support (see sidebar “What is the empowerment line?”). For example, Japan has nearly universal public healthcare, whereas individuals in the Netherlands are required to contribute to their own standard health insurance premiums. 2 Basic insurance in the Netherlands covers, for example, prescription medication and consulting a general practitioner. Long-term treatments are covered by the state. See, for example, “Health insurance,” Government of the Netherlands, March 2024.
• Second, PPP does not reflect the composition of the consumption basket at the empowerment line. Consider, for example, the PPP factor for housing, which includes rental and owned units of all sizes. 3 Purchasing power parities and the size of world economies: Results from the 2017 International Comparison Program , World Bank, 2020. By contrast, the housing component of the empowerment basket only considers renting a two-bedroom apartment in an average urban area and costs borne by the individual.
• Third, the same essential item can vary in quality and characteristics. The average home in Canada has 2.6 rooms per person, while in South Korea, the average home contains 1.5 rooms per person. Quality—not only in housing but also in healthcare, education, food, and other areas—can also vary because some countries have more stringent or extensive regulations than others (for example, more detailed building codes or product safety requirements). 4 For rooms per person, see the OECD’s Better Life Index on Housing at www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/housing/.
• Fourth, the precise composition of the empowerment basket itself differs slightly across countries. Housing tends to represent a larger share of the basket in higher-income economies than in lower-income economies, and even among higher-income economies, some countries have higher costs of individual items and therefore have a different distribution of items built into the empowerment cost.

The upward shifts in the empowerment line go hand in hand with higher income levels, even in PPP terms. This mirrors a phenomenon described in development literature of national poverty lines rising with income levels. In the case of poverty lines, changing bundles of consumption and higher standards are cited as reasons for an uptick as countries develop. 5 See, for example, Martin Ravallion and Shaohua Chen, “A proposal for truly global poverty measures,” Global Policy , volume 4, issue 3, September 2013.

Separately, we note measurement challenges that affect 20 of the lowest-income countries. As noted earlier, we apply a global empowerment line floor of $12 PPP per person, per day. Costs in these countries may actually be lower, but we chose to make an upward adjustment to account for quality improvements. Applying the $12 PPP floor implies that 23 percent of all lower-income countries’ populations on average are above the empowerment line. If we were to use a bottom-up calculation of local costs, that average would go up to 26 percent. When we apply the floor, economic growth becomes an even more important factor in lifting people above the empowerment line; the variation in empowerment outcomes explained by GDP per capita levels (as shown in Exhibit 2) is 12 percentage points higher compared with results based only on local costs. In nearly all of these countries, GDP per capita is less than $2,500, and the primary challenge is raising this level. As we consider affordability opportunities in the remainder of this research, we exclude these countries to avoid conflating affordability with lowering standards in places where they need to rise.

Two countries at the same income level may have different empowerment costs for a variety of reasons, starting with policy choices about which services are publicly funded and to what extent, and how effectively those services reach the intended recipients. Some of it comes down to local context. In some places, people may need their own cars to get around, for instance; in others, two-wheelers or public transit might suffice. Additionally, the same item might have different quality standards from place to place—for example, apartments in cold climates need extra insulation and glazed windows. Finally, costs can vary for identical items due to issues such as trade restrictions (see sidebar “Estimating the empowerment line across countries”).

For the bottom 20 percent of households, high costs for the essentials prevent living standards from rising

Economic growth lifts household incomes—even for those at the bottom. Our point-in-time view of countries across the income ladder shows that an incremental $100 of GDP per capita is associated with an additional $18 to $22 of consumption by households at the 20th percentile of income. If this static view holds over time, income growth should translate into higher spending power across a population.

But higher income levels are also associated with higher costs for life’s necessities, including food, rent, energy, and transportation. 15 Quality improvements and shifting relative costs and compositions of empowerment baskets drive these cost increases. However, they can be somewhat offset by growth in public support. Between 2009 and 2019, in-kind transfers as a share of GDP fell slightly in the United States and the European Union and increased slightly in Japan. See “Social benefits to households,” OECD, March 2024. As a country adds that incremental $100 in GDP per capita, affording the basics takes an additional $18 (Exhibit 3). Income gains for a household in the bottom quintile are almost fully eaten up by higher costs. This effect is most pronounced in wealthier economies, where many households on the margins simply don’t see their living standards improve. 16 Previous MGI research found that between 2000 and 2017, increased spending on housing, healthcare, and education absorbed income gains to varying degrees in ten of 22 countries, with the largest erosion in the United Kingdom. In countries where incomes declined (including Italy, Japan, and Spain), increased spending on the basics further eroded incomes by 6 to 29 percent. See The social contract in the 21st century , McKinsey Global Institute, February 2020. More prosperous households feel these cost increases, too. But their income gains are large enough to absorb them while still coming out ahead.

A vertical bar chart plots the dollar increase in household spending that corresponds with a $100 increase in GDP per capita across 120 countries, with bars for three representative household spending percentiles across the three income categories, for a total of nine bars. At the 20th percentile, the income groups each increase by about $20, but an annotation notes that $18 goes toward the increased cost of the empowerment basket. At the 50th percentile, the increases range from about $30 to $40. And at the 80th percentile, the increases range from about $45 to $85.

Postpandemic inflation has greatly exacerbated the squeeze on household budgets worldwide; the past few years have brought supply chain disruptions as well as global spikes in food and energy prices stemming from the pandemic, geopolitical conflicts, climate change, and blockages of shipping routes.

But it’s important to emphasize that the rising cost of living is not only a recent or transitory development. The prices of certain essential goods and services, such as housing, healthcare, and education, tend to increase much faster than overall consumer price indexes. 17 See, for example, Jakub Caisl et al., The uneven impact of high inflation , OECD Papers on Well-being and Inequalities, working paper number 18, October 2023. The average consumer benefits from lower relative prices for items such as communication technologies and clothing, while facing higher relative prices for housing, healthcare, and education. For low-income households, this issue is magnified, since essential items account for a disproportionate share of their expenditures.

There are structural forces at play in this phenomenon. Labor-intensive sectors, such as healthcare and education, and other low-productivity-growth sectors, such as construction, compete for labor with much higher-productivity sectors; they thus must raise wages at a higher rate than their productivity growth. Although high-productivity sectors such as technology may pay higher wages while lowering prices, low-productivity, labor-intensive sectors tend to pass higher production costs on to consumers. 18 This is the central thesis of “Baumol’s cost disease.” As mentioned earlier, our analysis is based on cross-sectional data across 120 economies as of 2022. While Baumol’s cost disease refers to growth in wages and productivity over time in an economy, it can help to explain why costs of empowerment tend to increase with income. In higher-productivity economies, wages across sectors increase, even in sectors with relatively low productivity. See William J. Baumol and William G. Bowen, “On the performing arts: The anatomy of their economic problems,” American Economic Review , volume 55, number 2, 1965; William J. Baumol, The cost disease: Why computers get cheaper and health care doesn’t , Yale University Press, 2012; and William D. Nordhaus, Baumol’s diseases: A macroeconomic perspective , NBER working paper number 12218, May 2006.

Beyond productivity and wage dynamics, inefficient markets often drive up the cost of the basics. This could be related to the extent of competition (and trade openness) in a given sector, regulation, or potential supply constraints. Most important is that housing supply is often restricted (by zoning laws, for example) and thus not able to respond to increasing demand related to population growth, migration, or changing preferences.

These types of issues add up to daily stress and missed opportunities for billions of people worldwide. Many are unable to save or to exercise choice about where and how they’d like to live. For example, more young adults in higher-income economies are living with their parents, delaying their independence by years; others are not having children because they feel they can’t afford it. 19 See, for example, “More adults living with their parents,” UK Office for National Statistics, May 10, 2023; Daniel de Visé, “More adult children are living with their parents. Parents are not pleased,” Hill , December 16, 2022; and Claire Cain Miller, “Americans are having fewer babies. They told us why,” New York Times , July 5, 2018.

If all countries could bring down the costs of the essentials to match the best-performing countries at their income level, we estimate that some 230 million additional people worldwide would reach full economic empowerment (Exhibit 4). 20 See the technical appendix for full details on the methodology behind this estimate. This figure is larger than the entire population of Nigeria—and it would boost the share of the global population above the empowerment line by three percentage points (and by five percentage points in our sample countries with GDP per capita above $2,500). Individuals would be relieved of pressure and better able to secure the economic foothold they need to thrive.

A data visualization table shows the distribution of 230 million people across five income categories who could reach full economic empowerment if their countries lowered the empowerment basket cost to match that of top performers, ranging from 20 million in countries with income between $20,000 and $40,000 to 90 million in countries with income between $5,000 and $10,000. A scatterplot with 93 dots shows countries’ daily empowerment basket cost on the vertical axis and GDP per capita on the horizontal axis, illustrating costs in each of the five income categories. The dots begin at the bottom left, around $5–$10 in countries below $5,000 GDP per capita and trend upward and to the right, to a range of about $25–$70 in countries above $40,000 GDP per capita.

Housing and food are the biggest affordability issues globally

Four basic items are most significant to the overall cost of the empowerment basket: housing, food, transportation, and healthcare (Exhibit 5). Together these items account for 80 percent of the consumption required to be empowered.

Housing costs are the biggest affordability challenge in high- and middle-income economies, explaining at least a third of the difference in the cost of a fully empowered life across those countries. Housing interventions can be transformative; conversely, inaction can have a dramatic impact on individuals and families in places where housing markets are distorted. Countries that have prioritized affordable housing are able to lift living standards for a wider swath of the population—and in countries with worsening housing affordability, the issue is becoming untenable.

The swings that could be possible with an emphasis on affordable housing are significant. For example, our estimates imply that if housing costs in Germany were hypothetically 26 percent lower, matching the level of its most affordable peer economy, 3.7 million more people would be lifted above its empowerment line. 21 In 2022, almost 12 percent of the German population lived in households that were overburdened by housing costs (that is, total housing costs, net of housing allowances, represented more than 40 percent of the total disposable household income, net of housing allowances). The comparable shares were 7.4 percent in Austria and 7.7 percent in Belgium. See “Housing cost overburden rate by age, sex and poverty status,” Eurostat, March 2024. In Mexico, if housing costs were hypothetically 18 percent lower (again, matching its most affordable peer economy), 2.4 million more people could reach empowerment.

In lower-income economies, food costs are also a significant cost-of-living factor with a major effect on empowerment. In countries with GDP per capita between $2,500 and $5,000, food costs 2.5 times more in some places than in others.

The housing squeeze has an imbalance of supply and demand at its core

Previous MGI research has found that rising incomes have historically gone together with increasing housing prices. 22 The social contract in the 21st century , McKinsey Global Institute, February 2020. From 2002 to 2018, well before the pandemic, individuals across European Union countries faced an average housing rental cost growth 16 percentage points higher than overall inflation. 23 Based on a weighted average by population across 27 EU countries, using Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) from Eurostat. The HICP measures the change over time in the prices of consumer goods and services acquired, used, or paid for by euro area households. Now the issue has become even more acute in the pandemic’s wake, notably in the major cities of high-income economies, including Australia, Canada, the United States, and multiple countries in Europe. 24 See, for example, “Australian houses are less affordable than they have been in decades,” Economist , January 2024; “Canada turns to a post-war strategy to battle housing crisis,” Reuters, December 12, 2023; and Housing affordability remains stretched amid higher interest rate environment , International Monetary Fund, January 2024.

What helps to explain these rising costs? In short, an imbalance in demand and supply.

On the demand side, a number of factors push costs up. Population growth, particularly among the middle class, is one. In addition, better housing is typically the first thing individuals spend on when they have an upward bump in disposable income, and then, as households build wealth, homes are often their primary store of value. 25 Greg Howard and Jack Liebersohn, “Why is the rent so darn high? The role of growing demand to live in housing-supply-inelastic cities,” Journal of Urban Economics , volume 124, 2021. Previous MGI research has found that household real estate is the largest form of wealth globally, and for many households, their home is their largest asset. Rising home values were also associated with low-interest-rate environments in the decade preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, though that relationship is not in the scope of this analysis. See The rise and rise of the global balance sheet: How productively are we using our wealth? , McKinsey Global Institute, November 2021. Furthermore, as economies grow, people expect higher-quality living environments and household sizes get smaller, leading to greater costs per person. 26 The quality of housing for populations in the bottom quintile of the income distribution improves as economies get richer. At the same time, the average household size decreases, and the number of rooms per household member increases. See, for example, “Housing conditions,” OECD, March 2024; Total population living in a dwelling with a leaking roof, damp walls, floors or foundation, or rot in window frames or floor , Eurostat, August 2024; and “Household size and composition,” United Nations, 2022. In “superstar” cities with better job opportunities, demand for housing is especially strong and prices are inelastic. 27 Joseph Gyourko, Christopher Mayer, and Todd Sinai, “Superstar cities,” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy , volume 5, number 4, November 2013. Demand for housing also comes from investors who seek attractive investment opportunities in real estate, particularly in major cities. 28 See, for example, Nick Gallent, Dan Durrant, and Neil May, “Housing supply, investment demand and money creation—a comment on the drivers of London’s housing crisis,” Urban Studies , volume 54, issue 10, May 2017; and Mi Zhou, Yurong Qiao, and Jiahong Guo, “Separating the consumption and investment demands for housing: Evidence from urban China,” Heliyon , volume 9, issue 10, October 2023.

On the supply side, years of underinvestment, zoning restrictions, and regulations—as well as local resistance to new builds—have produced housing shortages that have compounded over time. 29 Edward Glaeser and Joseph Gyourko, The economic implications of housing supply , 2021. In some locations, vacation rentals are reducing supply and pricing out locals. 30 Agustin Cocola-Gant, “Holiday rentals: The new gentrification battlefront,” Sociological Research Online , volume 21, issue 3, August 2016. Increasing interest rates in the past two years have further limited housing supply. 31 Turbulence for interest—sensitive sectors in eye of rate hike storm , Oxford Economics Research Briefing, November 2023. New builds have become more expensive because of the price of scarce land in dense cities and because of construction costs that have outpaced inflation.

Both public and private actors could accelerate economic inclusion by putting more weight on affordability

The empowerment line could be a useful tool for galvanizing both public and private efforts to expand inclusion, with a greater emphasis on affordability.

The public sector plays a major role

Much of the debate about how the public sector can improve the well-being of lower-income households revolves around income, inflation, and potential responses such as tax policies, cash transfers, and labor regulation. But the public sector also affects affordability. Most governments deliver public goods and services such as housing, education, and healthcare. Most intervene in markets to a certain extent, perhaps by subsidizing priority goods (such as food or energy), preventing price gouging, ensuring competition, or regulating trade.

One of the roles of government could be to maximize the efficiency of end-to-end value chains (such as food or energy delivery); this could take the form of streamlining regulatory burdens or building modern infrastructure. Boosting the reach of existing in-kind transfer programs could help further bring down households’ spending on essential goods. In some cases, policies focused on cost reduction may have a larger impact than those focused on supplementing incomes. In two-thirds of OECD countries, for example, housing rental costs are a greater share of lower-income households’ income than total tax and social contribution payments. 32 Approximate calculation based on median rent burden among the bottom quintile of the income distribution, compared with the “all in” average tax rates and wedges for individuals earning 67 percent of the average wage. See “Average personal income tax and social security contribution rates on gross labor income,” OECD, 2022; Affordable Housing Database, OECD, 2024. Whatever strategy governments pursue, it is important to monitor the impact of interventions over time, keeping in mind the potential for unintended consequences. 33 Such consequences include inefficiencies and market distortions resulting from subsidies and price controls. For example, rent control policies might reduce the supply of rental housing. See, for example, Elizabeth Van Heuvelen, “Back to basics: Subsidy wars,” Finance & Development , IMF, June 2023; and Rebecca Diamond, Timothy McQuade, and Franklin Qian, “The effects of rent control expansion on tenants, landlords, and inequality: Evidence from San Francisco,” American Economic Review , volume 109, number 9, September 2019.

The private sector could also do more

There’s a strong case for companies to care about empowerment. Internally, empowered employees are better able to contribute productively and have less incentive to leave. 34 Natalia Emanuel and Emma Harrington, The payoffs of higher pay: Elasticities of productivity and labor supply with respect to wages , October 2020. Moreover, helping employees save on living costs can produce a labor cost advantage, especially for companies that are internalizing those costs by adopting “living wages.” Externally, some consumers make purchasing decisions based on a company’s reputation as an employer and as a corporate citizen. 35 Enrique Bianchi, Juan Manuel Bruno, and Francisco J. Sarabia-Sanchez, “The impact of perceived CSR on corporate reputation and purchase intention,” European Journal of Management and Business Economics , 2019. Empowerment initiatives can enhance brands, and having a reputation for delivering value inspires loyalty. More broadly, helping more families achieve higher living standards creates a virtuous cycle in which more consumers can afford a broader set of products and services. It also contributes to more stable societies and better business environments.

The private sector’s role in providing jobs—ideally jobs with stability, benefits, and decent working conditions that pay a living wage—is one of the biggest drivers of empowerment. Establishing these job might involve taking a long-term view of the potential for higher productivity through investing in skills, rethinking job roles, and recruiting in ways that expand opportunity for people who might otherwise be stuck in low-wage work. 36 See, for example, Rewriting the script: LA’s opportunity for inclusive economic growth , McKinsey & Company, December 2023; The future of work after COVID-19 , McKinsey Global Institute, February 2021; Reskilling China: Transforming the world’s largest workforce into lifelong learners , McKinsey Global Institute, January 2021; and Tanya Milberg, “The Reskilling Revolution is upon us—by 2030, 1 billion people will be equipped with the skills of the future,” World Economic Forum, April 2023. Large multinationals could influence wages and working conditions—for instance, trying to reduce the precariousness of nonstandard employment (such as temporary, part-time, and on-call work) across their broader value chains.

Through innovation, companies can address unmet demand in the lower-cost end of the markets for housing, energy, food, healthcare, and communication. They could develop new affordable offerings and expand low-cost business models into underserved regions and customer segments. There may be opportunities to pass on productivity-driven savings to consumers, particularly in labor-intensive service sectors such as healthcare that have seen high relative price growth and in other low-productivity sectors such as construction. 37 Previous MGI research has found that improving productivity in construction, healthcare, and education, and keeping food prices in line with best-performing peer countries, could lower empowerment costs by 9 percent globally, on average. See From poverty to empowerment: Raising the bar for sustainable and inclusive growth , McKinsey Global Institute, August 2023, and Reinventing construction through a productivity revolution , McKinsey Global Institute, February 2017.

Indeed, many forward-thinking companies are already embarking on initiatives like these. Further progress starts with identifying profitable ways to deliver positive impact—and the empowerment line could be a useful tool that helps companies prioritize the initiatives with the greatest return on investment.

Economic growth is a prerequisite for empowering households, especially in lower- and middle-income economies. But it’s not enough to solve the last piece of the equation. When costs of essentials rise faster than household incomes, people are priced out; this strains individuals, families, communities, and eventually the social fabric. Ensuring that housing, food, education, healthcare, and other essentials are within reach is part of building more balanced economies where everyone has a measure of security and the opportunity to realize their full potential.

This research was led by Kweilin Ellingrud , a McKinsey senior partner and director of MGI in Minneapolis; Marco Piccitto , a McKinsey senior partner in Milan; Tilman Tacke , an MGI partner in Madrid; Rebecca J. Anderson , an MGI senior fellow in Washington, DC; and Kevin Russell , an MGI senior fellow in Charlotte. Ishaa Sandhu led the working team, which included Nina Chen , Kendyll Hicks , Marty Kang , Elodie Muchembled , Venassa Omoruna , Jali Packer , Munirah Dasu Patel , Marina Salimgareeva , Daniel Tracey , Noah Welgross , and Minéa Wuori .

The article was edited by MGI executive editor Lisa Renaud, with data visualizations by Chuck Burke.

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Women's Empowerment and Economic Development

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.

The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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Impact of microfinance on women’s economic empowerment

• Belay Mengstie   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4330-7083 1  

Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship volume  11 , Article number:  55 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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Women’s economic empowerment a strategy aimed at enabling women in decision-making, increment in income and asset ownership. The main aim of the study is to examine the impact of microfinance on women’s economic empowerment. Data were derived from a questionnaire of a sample of 346 women clients of microfinance. Multiple regression and paired sampled t -test data analysis techniques were used in the study. Multiple linear regression result revealed that age, marital status, education level, credit amount, and number of training have significant effect on women’s economic empowerment. However, previous business experience did not have significant impact on women’s economic empowerment. Paired sampled t -test result revealed that there is significant mean difference before and after microfinance service in terms of income, asset, and saving. Microfinance has significant positive effect on women’s economic empowerment by improving women’s independent income, increasing asset possession levels, and improved monthly saving amount. Moreover, the study proved that microfinance has a positive impact on women’s entrepreneurship development and business exposure.

Introduction

Microfinance institutions have been considered as important development program in Ethiopia for the last 20 years. The legal foundation for the microfinance movement and expansion in Ethiopia was started after 1996 proclamation. In the development of microfinance, this proclamation considered as a bench mark to start and develop microfinance in the country. Women’s participation in microfinance is growing gradually. All microfinance industries have a shared vision of poverty alleviation and women’s economic development.

Microfinance institutions are effective instruments for providing basic services like saving, affordable credit, and skill training (Haimanot, 2007 ; Mahfuz et al., 2017 ; Misrak, 2012 ). Microfinance institutions are important economic development agents intended to benefit women and lower income people (Cicchiello et al., 2021 ; Duflo, 2012 ; Meressa, 2020 ). Microfinance institution plays a great role in different countries in alleviating women’s economic problem, creating self-employment opportunities, and developing businesses for women entrepreneurs. Women are benefited from participating in microfinance program. Women’s participation in microfinance credit program increased their economic position, exercise economic independence, and improvement in their business leadership skills (Addai, 2017 ; Haimanot, 2007 ). However, Women’s participation in economic activities is very low in Ethiopia (Dawit, 2014 ; Solomon et al., 2019 ; Zelalem & Chalchissa, 2014 ).

Women represent the main economic force in different developing countries. As economies become more and more information-driven, the issues of women’s access to and the use of information and communication technologies are growing in importance for developing economies (Michota, 2013 ). Economic empowerment improves women’s opportunity to resources and non-financial resources. Moreover, it creates good opportunity for skill development and market information (Addai, 2017 ; Khandre, 2015 ). Women’s economic participation is base to exercise women’s right and helping them develop decision-making role over their household and influence in their community. Women’s empowerment is creating equitable societies (Shaheen et al., 2013 ).

There are controversies on impact of microfinance on women’s economic empowerment. Odell ( 2010 ) study identified the difficultly of making generalized conclusions taking to consideration the heterogeneity of microfinance interventions. Stewart et al. ( 2010 ) study in Africa found little impact of microfinance on income of beneficiaries. According to Rathiranee and Semasinghe ( 2015 ) study, there is a weak but significant impact on women empowerment due to microfinance service provision in Sri Lanka. Addai ( 2017 ) and Mohammad et al. ( 2017 ) study clearly indicated that there is positive effect of microfinance on women’s economic empowerment in Ghana and Bangladesh, respectively. Different researchers confirmed the significance effect of microfinance (Kato & Kratzer, 2013 ; Loomba, 2017 ; Misrak, 2012 ).

There are many published studies linking microfinance to women’s empowerment. The studies mainly concerned on microfinance role on, poverty alleviation, and socio-economic development through microfinance. Particularly in Ethiopia, the concept of microfinance is at its infancy level that needs further investigation. Therefore, this study is focused to examine how microfinance service has impact on women’s economic empowerment taking into account Amhara credit and saving institution of Ethiopia.

Literature review

Microfinance development in ethiopia.

Microfinance program in Ethiopia launched during 1960s as semi-formal microfinance service with credit and saving cooperatives. Semi-formal microfinance created assets to undertake different economic activities, improved household asset building, and manage risks and bad events. Different non-government organizations in Ethiopia have introduced saving and credit cooperatives aimed at creating self-employment and generating income for the betterment of society affected by drought in the country (Befekadu & Berhanu, 2000 ).

Until the beginning of 1990s financial sources to finance for urban and rural poor and small enterprise in Ethiopia were informal and semi-formal sources of finance like families, friends and moneylenders (Itana et al., 2004 ). They further noted that, starting in the mid-1990s after known drought in 1984, Non-Government Organizations introduced the idea of saving and credit among poor section of the society as a means for rehabilitation and development. Later, government programs undertaken in collaboration with international financial institution even though both types of programs were operated in unorganized and scatter manner and lacked sustainability until the year 1996.

Formal microfinance in Ethiopia was developed and flourished recently with fast growth rate. Dawit ( 2014 ) noted that Ethiopian owned microfinances were established to provide different services in rural households, promote saving habit and credit accessibility with strong focus on sustainability. Formal microfinance was strengthened in 1990 when an urban micro-financing scheme was initiated at national level with agreement signed between International Development and Ethiopian Government (Befekadu & Berhanu, 2000 ). After Ethiopian people’s democratic front, present Ethiopian government, took over power in 1991, considerable attempt has been made to liberalize the financial sector. As result, Proclamation No. 84/94 was declared, to allow private and domestic investors to engage in insurance and banking business, which were previously monopolized by the government. Another Proclamation 40/1996 was issued to solve financial services delivery of the to poor section of the society (Dawit, 2014 ). Therefore, the legal foundation for the microfinance industry was laid in the country with Proclamation 40/1996 on supervision and licensing of MFIs in the year 1996. This proclamation act as a framework to start, expands, and develops microfinance in Ethiopia.

Agricultural Development which Leads to Industrialization strategy considered rural finance as an important tool for agriculture and food security. As a result, the Ethiopian government reconsider microfinance operational modality in order to facilitate microfinance service delivery and outreach. Currently, in Ethiopia there are 38 microfinance institutions licensed to operate regional states and throughout the country (Solomon et al., 2019 ).

Microfinance and women’s economic empowerment

Microfinance institutions are considered as society based strategy to give different finance related resources for the poor and disadvantage section of the society in order to improve the life of clients (SEEP, 2006 ). Microfinance sector plays vital role in supporting the community in their transition towards development of the country and peace building. Microfinance industry support local economic development by providing the needed financial and non-financial services for small enterprise development. According to Kamberidou ( 2013 ), women are naturally strong in using financial and non-financial resources in building strong relationships, and creating a culture of collaboration. Some researchers consider microfinance as survival strategy in time of disaster and sustainable peace development (Dawit, 2014 ; Khanday et al., 2015 ).

In Ethiopia context Supervision and Licensing of Microfinance Institution Proclamation No. 626/2009 defines microfinance as “financial services provision including credit, savings, drawing, money transfer services and other related services.” This microfinance business definition does not confine microfinance institution to only credit. In this article, microfinance is defined as financial services provision to the low-income people and small enterprises that lack access to formal financial institutions. Microfinance is not limited to borrowing activities but also includes savings, transfer facilities, training, insurance and others.

Microfinance sector empowers women economically by providing working capital and support women in order to get constant income to their families (Tandon, 2016 ). According to Mudakappa ( 2014 ) many women were clients of microfinance in different countries. Khanday et al. ( 2015 ) believed that development of women economically generated self-esteem and respect for women microfinance beneficiaries. Microfinance provides finance to women who helped them to start new business and expand the existing one. Microfinance institution service of credit and training gives women confidence and helped them to be more active in participating in the household and community affairs.

Microfinance institution service empowers women economically by providing self-employment opportunity, improving labor productivity, and increasing wage rate (UN, 2011 ). Microfinance impact mostly measured using variation in independent income, employment rate, and household consumption on a sustained basis. Microfinance institution service impact could also be directly known by considering increment in outcomes such as literacy rate, fertility rate, and housing pattern. Changes in income and self-employment opportunity among enterprise owners benefit community at large (Ertu & Tilahun, 2022 ).

Microfinance service helped the poor section of the society to protect from different risks and diversify business, to increase sources of income which is considered as important instrument in the reduction of poverty and women’s economic empowerment (Addai, 2017 ; Littlefield et al., 2013 ; UN, 2012 ). Many researchers result showed that income played significant role on consumption, capital formation and other indicators of human well-being. When the income level increases access to balanced food, access to medical services and children education are positively affected (Solomon et al., 2019 ). Moreover, microfinance institutions provide services which seek to minimize the risk from adverse effects for the poor society. For example, savings programs are operating to help microfinance institution clients to gradually accumulate working capital for the times of crises and when there is capital need for different purposes. Efficient microfinance program could also reduce the rate of unemployment, and diversify sources of income. Thus, Women’s economic empowerment as result of microfinance service could be achieved.

Conceptual framework of the study

Conceptual framework for this study is developed based on the evidence available in literature. More than 40 researches reviewed to develop this conceptual frame work. Based on the literature review, the researcher has developed conceptual framework to show the relationship between independent variables, microfinance service, and dependent variable women’s economic empowerment.

According to SEEP ( 2006 ), impact assessment can be used to improve services, increase impact on poverty and microfinance institution efficiency, to promote good client service and accountability, and provide accountability to donors and other external stakeholders. Ledgerwood ( 1999 ) divides impact of microfinance into three categories namely economic impacts, socio political or cultural impacts, and personal or psychological impact. Women’s economic empowerment can be influenced by both women’s demographic characteristics and access to financial resources from microfinance institutions. Demographic factors are expected to influence access to microfinance services. If women have access to these services, they will be able to participate in income-generating activities whether to start a new business or improve the exiting one. The result expected is empowering economically which is manifested through ownership in income-generating activities, ownership of assets, increased income, savings, and decision-making (Selvaraj, 2016 ).

Microfinance service (access to credit and training) and demographic variables (age, marital status, and education) leads to women economic empowerment. Addai ( 2017 ) study clearly showed that microfinance service has impact on women’s economic empowerment but the relationship is mainly take into account marital status, age and educational of the women. Rehman et al. ( 2015 ) study found that education and age have impact on women’s economic development of women beneficiaries. The main independent variables which microfinance institution provides are access to credit and training which enable women to start their own economic activities or invest more in existing activities and earn an additional income. According to Dawit ( 2014 ) and Rehman et al. ( 2015 ) increased participation in economic activities raises women’s independent incomes and savings, increases control of their own and family income, and other household resources which are basis for women’s economic empowerment.

Data and methodology

The research was conducted in Ethiopia in the year 2019. From the literature review, 35 items that would indicate women’s income, asset, saving and decision-making were identified. A questionnaire consisting of both open- and a close-ended question was used to obtain information from the selected samples of 346 respondents. The questionnaire basically focused on socio-demographic characteristics, economic empowerment and microfinance service.

The questionnaire was standardized which was used and approved; however, pilot study from selected respondents was conducted to refine the instrument. Questionnaire was tested on some respondents to make the instrument objective, suitable, relevant, to the problem and reliable. Issues raised by the respondents were corrected and questionnaires were refined. Besides, proper detection by senior research was also taken to ensure validity of the instrument. To check internal consistency, reliability test was conducted in with a sample of 30 clients and the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the instrument was checked. Cronbach’s alpha was computed and was 0.85 which is higher than 0.7. Therefore, the instrument was reliable and used for the study.

Multistage sampling technique was used in this research. Amhara region of Ethiopia has 10 zonal towns and the researcher took 3 zone administrations. The researchers Knowledge and experience was used for selecting the study area. In order to evenly distribute the sample in all geographical area; the existing administrative division were taken as a base for allocation of sample size. The numbers of respondents included in the study for each town were found by proportional method based on client’s number in each town using Amhara credit and saving institutions data. Finally, respondents enrolled in the study were drawn using simple random sampling technique. As a result, 51.5% of the respondents were from Dessie town administrations, 27% of the respondents were from Debrebirhan town administration and the remaining 21.5% were from Woldia town administrations.

Multiple linear regression analysis was used to determine whether the six independent variables, which are age, marital status, education level, previous business experience, credit amount and number of training have any significant effect towards economic empowerment of women. Moreover, paired sampled t -test was used to compare mean difference of income, saving, and asset before and after credit program. The econometrics model used is:

where CEEI = Cumulative Economic Empowerment Index; β 0  = constant; β 1 , β 2 , β 3 , β 4 , β 5 , β 6 , are the coefficients, AGE = age; MARS = marital status; EDUL = education level; BEP = business experience; TRAE = training exposure; CUML = commutative loan amount received; έ  = error term.

The dependent variable is cumulative economic empowerment index. Accordingly, for measuring economic empowerment of women in the study, a Cumulative Economic Empowerment Index (CEEI) was developed by summing up the individuals’ scores obtained from all the four indicators: asset, income, saving, and control over resource. Other researchers (Dawit, 2014 ; Kaur, 2012 ; Leonhäuser & Parveen, 2004 ; Mohammod, 2014 ; Parveen & Chaudhury, 2009 ; Simantini & Bimal, 2016 ) also used similar methods to measure women’s economic empowerment by developing a cumulative women’s economic empowerment index.

Results and discussion

This section of the study was conducted to contribute new information about the impact of microfinance through Amhara credit and saving institution on women economic empowerment. Multiple regression and paired sample t test were employed for data analysis.

Regression result

A further inspection on the regression coefficients of individual predictor variables revealed that age (Beta = 0.285, p  < 0.05), marital status (Beta = 0.125, p  < 0.05), level of education (Beta = 0.260, p  < 0.05), number of training (Beta = 0.224, p  < 0.05), credit amount (Beta = 0.225, p  < 0.05), are significant predictors of overall economic empowerment of women. This finding revealed that age, marital status, education level, number of training, credit amount have significant effect on the economic empowerment of women. Previous business experience (Beta = 0.064, p  > 0.05) variable was found to be insignificant on women economic empowerment in the study area (Table 1 ).

This finding revealed that age has significant impact on women economic empowerment. An increase in the age of the women raises maturity and their confidence to earn more money, which leads to increases in their overall economic status of women. This study found that age and women’s economic empowerment was associated positively, i.e., economic empowerment increase with the increases in age. According to Dawit ( 2014 ) explanation for the positive relationship was that women gain more experience and knowledge about different family matters, as women’s age increased to older age. This experience gives them better understanding to make decision about their life, family matters and in the community which leads them towards economic empowerment. The result of the study is consistent with previous researchers’ findings. For example, Rehman et al. ( 2015 ) study found that age has profound impact on women’s empowerment. Further, Ringkvist ( 2013 ) field study in Burma found that age seemingly has effect on the economic empowerment of women.

As indicated in above table marital status has significant positive impact on women’s economic empowerment. The married women were significantly more likely to be enjoying economic empowerment than unmarried, widowed and divorced women. The fulfillment of family requirement may be the main reason to help a married women to earn more and thereby improve the economic status. This finding is consistent with Addai ( 2017 ) finding, married women supported by her husband and her children. Conversely, Dawit ( 2014 ) study indicated that marital status has insignificant impact on women economic empowerment. His explanation of this result was that single women are the decision-maker of their household and they had more exposure to the external environments to participate in economic activities and improve their livelihood status, and have more freedom and self-esteem in controlling the resources that enhance their empowerment.

The regression results revealed that the educated clients of microfinance were better placed in terms of effective usage of credit and training service and enjoying economic empowerment. In other words, educated microfinance institution clients were found to have a positive impact on raising the economic status of women. Women’s level of education has direct relationship with control over resource. Moreover, women’s education level affect her decision on contraception, better employment opportunity and income which are the basic indicator of women economic development and empowerment. Addai ( 2017 ) study also shows that education level has significant impact on women’s economic empowerment. Parveen ( 2005 ) also argued that education improve the socio-economic condition of women, facilitates them to demand and protect their rights. Educated and literate women had greater access to information and knowledge that increased their chances for paid jobs, other benefits and resources.

Amount of credit has significant impact on women’s economic empowerment. The provision of credit service helps to improve the economic condition of women clients. As the amount loan increases, women use their credit on income-generating activities. They jointly use their income to start new business and expand the existing business. Members, who borrowed high amount of credit, secured higher economic empowerment index. Women who got more credit are more likely to achieve higher economic empowerment level than those who received low amount of credit. According to Miled et al. ( 2022 ) microfinance loans can lead to improve the relative income position of the poor in developing countries, albeit slowly. The finding of this study is similar with the research findings of Khan and Noreen ( 2012 ) study in Pakistan. They found that credit given by microfinance institution has significant impact on economic empowerment of women. This finding is consistent with Ringkvist ( 2013 ) and Loomba ( 2017 ) studies that the loan access by microfinance and its effective utilization have a positive impact on women’s economic empowerment.

As can be evidenced in the regression result number of training provided by microfinance has significant effect and leads to women economic empowerment. Women who attended training more likely grow their business skill and attitude than who did not attend training. Number of training significantly affects economic empowerment of women. Regular training is very important, especially so in the initial stage. Microfinance provides training on credit usage, how to start new business and how to expand business. This ensures that women remain committed to the their business and are able to plan in advance as regards the operation of their business. Majority of the respondents reported that all members of microfinance participated in training before they got credit (Beriso, 2021 ; Dincer, 2014 ; Leonhäuser, 2004 ; Rwanda Charles, 2016 ).

From the regression result, it can be concluded that microfinance program is helpful in empowering women economically. The education and training provided by microfinance program lead to the development of the overall personality of the program participants. The beneficiaries of the program have higher levels of employment, income and participation in household financial decision-making as compared to non-participants.

According Alene ( 2020 ) findings level of educational, entrepreneurial experience, access to training, finance, and information, government support, land ownership are significant in explaining women entrepreneurs. The results with respect to multiple regressions have presented several interesting observations. Different variables like age, education marital status, credit amount, number of training has significant relation to women’s economic empowerment. However, previous business experience has insignificant influence on the economic empowerment of women. Bera ( 2014 ) study concluded that participation in the microcredit program increases if the women are aged, educated, currently married, education levels of the heads of their families are high, and possessed more non land assets.

Paired t test result

In this study, paired t test used to compare mean difference of income, saving, and asset before and after credit program. Paired sample t test was conducted to determine the effect of microfinance on women’s asset after credit and before credit program, there was significant effect on asset, t (345) = 16.444, p  = 00. It can be observed from Table 2 that the mean asset difference after credit and before credit program is significant and microfinance program has positive impact on women asset ownership. The result of the study is similar with Temba ( 2016 ), a study conducted in Tanzania and showed that microfinance has able to managed to help women to avoid poverty and empower themselves economically by increasing their asset ownership when compared to before joining microfinance program.

As clearly shown in table above, there is significant mean difference in income after and before credit program t (345) = 23.750, p  = 00. Based on the result by pair t test statistics shown, there is significant mean difference after women get credit from microfinance and before credit program. Gangadhar and Malyadri ( 2015 ) and Wanjiku and Njiru ( 2016 ) study also supports the result of this study.

Paired sample t test was conducted to determine the effect of microfinance on women’s saving amount after credit and before credit program, there was significant effect on saving amount, t (345) = 19.532, p  = 00. Before joining microfinance most women did not save and few women save but the saving amount were small. The main reason for not saving is lack of additional income and lack of awareness about business and microfinance service. After credit program, almost all of women clients put their money in saving accounts maintained with microfinance institutions and commercial banks.

Conclusion and recommendation

Multiple regressions have presented several interesting observations. Different variables like age, education, marital status, credit amount, and number of training has significant relation to women’s economic empowerment. However, previous business experience has insignificant influence on the economic empowerment of women.

To know the use or non-use of microfinance on women’s asset, income, saving, pair t test was employed. The result of study concludes that the difference in asset, income, and saving amount were significant. Therefore, one can easily conclude that microfinance plays a great role on improving women asset, income, and saving. Different researchers also show the importance microfinance on women’s asset ownership improvement, income increment, saving amount improvement, and effective decision-making. Participation in microfinance program has led to greater level of women’s economic empowerment in terms of increase in economic status, knowledge of business activities, self-confidence on participating in income-generating activities, social and political awareness, developmental of organizational skills and mobility.

Recommendation

The findings of this study have important implications for interventions designed to enhance the economic empowerment status in Amhara region of Ethiopia. Since women’s economic empowerment depends on the level of income, saving amount, and asset ownership, attention should be given to those factors that influence women’s economic empowerment. Some factors were identified and the following recommendations are provided:

Amhara credit and saving institution services to women’s economic empowerment should be improved by working with town administration women’s affair office and other non-government organization which are working on women empowerment.

Most of the respondents considered the loan offered as very small which is not adequate to start business. In fact, the loan size increases as settled the loan in full and take another. However, the loan still falls short of the amount needed to start business. Therefore, Amhara credit and saving institution should adjust the amount of credit provided to women clients.

Majority of microfinance clients are dissatisfied with high interest rate. Therefore, Amhara credit and saving institution needs to revise its interest policy so as to attract more women clients and achieve women’s economic empowerment objective.

Availability of data and materials

All data are available on hand.

Abbreviations

Microfinance institutions

United Nations

Micro- and small enterprises

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Economic empowerment of rural and urban women in India: A comparative analysis

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The status of women is intimately connected with their economic situation depending upon the opportunity for participation in economic activities. The census data, 2011 shows a vast inequality between rural and urban women work participation as urban women associated with economic activities is just about half of the rural women. Available pieces of the literature revealed how the employment status of women makes them empower, but limited research has been conducted on the comparison of women empowerment in the rural-urban area in different dimensions. In this perspective, assuming that women’s economic empowerment is dependent on work participation, the present study attempts to compare the magnitude of women’s economic empowerment in urban India with its rural counterpart, focusing on various dimensions of work participation. This study is entirely based on secondary databases collected from the Census of India, 2011 and Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2019-20. Economic Empowerment Index (EEI) of women has been measured with the help of women work participation, literate women work share, educational level-wise women work participation, work share by married women and job profile wise women work share using the widely adopted normalization technique. The result of the study is showing that the rural women are more engaged in the workforce in all the selected dimensions. The overall analysis is reflected in EEI, which proves that rural women are more economically empowered in comparison with their urban counterparts.

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1 Introduction

Employment is the source of income that ensures the individuals’ economic empowerment. Irrespective of gender, being engaged in paid work is the primary step to being empowered. It means economic empowerment is the fruit of participation in paid work. Particularly for women, when they are associated with paid work, they hold power to make their decisions on their own [ 1 , 2 ] and contribute to their family [ 3 , 4 ], which leads them to be more empowered. For a woman, working status is a crucial determinant of her empowerment status [ 5 ] and economic independence is one of the essential factors for overall well-being [ 6 , 7 , 8 ]. Economically independent women with the contribution to her family enjoy their rights and hold more power with a high level of self-confidence [ 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ] and they are more financially stable than those women who are not engaged in the workforce [ 14 ]. Studies have found that women engaged in economic activity outside of her family helps to increase their decision-making power and leads to more control over resources [ 15 ]. Another study by Van den Broeck & Maertens in 2017 traced out that women’s participation in off-farm economic activity increases their income level, which improves their level of happiness [ 16 ]. The working status also helps to upgrade her socio-economic condition, quality of health [ 17 , 18 ], and standard of living [ 19 ]. Many prominent scholars like Murdock (1949), D’Andrade (1966), Boserup (1970), Ember and Ember (1971) established a direct relationship between participation in economic activities and up-gradation of status in the society [ 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 ]. According to Datta and Sinha (1997), female participation in agriculture leads to a higher status [ 24 ]. Similarly, D’Andrade in 1966 stated participation in economic activities makes females enjoy power and hold control over the activities of households [ 21 ]. Believing on these relevant studies, the present study assumes that women’s economic empowerment depends on work participation.

However, historically it has been proved that in a patriarchal society, women work participation is significantly less as compared to their male counterparts, which forces them to be dependent either on her father, brother before marriage or on her husband after marriage. Unfortunately, India is also not an exception of this faulty system. In the context of inequality, the welfare approach in Geography suggested by Smith in 1977 was focused on ‘who gets what, where and how?’ the analysis of social well-being concerns itself with problems of inequitable distribution across different population categories. Within this framework, analysis of gender disparities is located [ 24 ]. They addressed towards inter-gender disparity in this country, only 25.51% of women are engaged in the workforce, whereas for men the percentage is more than double i.e. 53.26%. Like inter-gender disparity, the intra-gender disparity is also pointing toward the similar condition in India. It also has come to light that there is a vast inequality between rural and urban women work participation. At the national level, 30.03% of rural women are engaged in economic activities. This figure decreased to 15.44% of urban women associated with economic activities, about half of the rural women. Urbanisation is often associated with the greater independence of women and the erosion of patriarchal power relations and values [ 25 ]. In counter-argument, Bhagat in 2017 stated that Indian cities have failed to achieve the goal of gender equality, as patriarchal norms continue to play an essential role in urban social structure [ 26 ]. When women worldwide are engaged in the debate over their right to equal pay, India needs to keep up with the number of women who participate in the workforce. The anomaly in women engaged in employment in urban and rural India is also an area that needs to be addressed by policymakers [ 27 ].

The pieces of the literature revealed how the employment status of women makes them empower, but limited research has been conducted on the comparison of women empowerment in the rural-urban area in different dimensions. However, from the last couple of PLFS surveys it has been found that the urban women’s unemployment rate is higher as compared to its rural counterpart. In other words, employment among rural women is high and the gap of employment rate between rural-urban women is high. From this perspective, in the study, an attempt has been made to compare the magnitude of women’s work participation in urban India with its rural counterpart based on their literacy status, education level and marital status. Besides, a section has been added on women’s work participation in different job profiles to understand better the quality of work they are engaged with. Apart from this, to analyse the economic empowerment of women in both rural and urban areas five major components have been taken into consideration i.e., women work participation, women work participation based on literacy status, educational level-wise women work share, married women work participation and working women and their profile of the job.

Thus, the study has been divided into seven sections and in each section, a comparative analysis of rural and urban women workforce at the national level as well as state-level has been portrayed. In the first part, the women work participation rate has been analysed. The second part deals with the women work share based on literacy, which means the proportion of literate women engaged in economic activity out of total literate women. The third part is devoted to analysing educational level-wise women work participation. In the fourth section, the impact of marital status has been assessed by measuring the share of married women workers out of total married women in rural and urban India. The fifth part attempts to figure out the work shared by women engaged in the different profiles of jobs. In the sixth part, the overall economic empowerment of rural and urban women has been explained. The current scenario of rural and urban women workshare has been analysed in the seventh section. The last section concludes with an overview of the study.

2 Database and methodology

This study is quantitative in nature and entirely based on secondary databases. All the relevant data has been collected from the different series of Census of India 2011 [ 28 ]. Based on the collected database, relevant statistical techniques have been applied for the empirical result. Work Participation Rate (WPR) of women has been measured applying the formula used in the census 2011-

Like WPR, the other fields i.e. literate women work share out of total literate women, educational level-wise women work participation, work share by married women out of total married women and work share by women in different job profiles also have been calculated using the formula mentioned above.

Besides these, the Economic Empowerment Index (EEI) of women has been measured with the help of the variables mentioned above. EEI is the composite score of the normalised values of the five variables. For calculating the index widely accepted normalization formula has been adopted here:

\({\text{X}}_{\text{d}}\) is the observed value of the variable

\({\text{X}}_{\text{m}\text{a}\text{x}}\) is the maximum value of the variable

\({\text{X}}_{\text{m}\text{i}\text{n}}\) is the minimum value of the variable

The index range varies from ‘zero’ to ‘one’. A higher value indicates greater level of economic empowerment and a lesser value reflects a lower level of empowerment. At first, the index values of all the unidirectional individual variables have been calculated using the formula. In the second step, all the indices values have been summed up and divided by the number of variables used to calculate the EEI of rural and urban women separately.

Apart from the census data, the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) of July 2019- June 2020 database [ 29 ] has been used to find the present scenario of women work share. From the database, LFPR and UR have been calculated using the following formulas adopted from PLFS 2019-20:

3 Result and discussion

3.1 women work participation scenario in rural and urban india.

In an international comparison of the work participation rate of urban women in 38 countries made by Collyer and Langlois, India was fourth from the bottom; the rates were much higher in USA, countries of Western Europe, Japan and other developed countries [ 30 ]. According to the Press Trust of India (PTI), the WPR of women in urban India is significantly lower and needs improvement [ 27 ]. The present study also reveals a vast difference between rural and urban women’s work participation rates in India. The proportion of women engaged in the workforce is double in rural India than the urban (Figs.  1 and 2 ). Reddy in 1979 also extracts similar results that rural female activity rates are significantly higher in all parts of India except in Punjab and the extent of inter-state variation is wider in the case of rural female activity than that of urban female activity rates. The reasons behind urban-rural differences in female activity rates identified by him are differences in the occupational pattern, variation in the educational requirements for entry into jobs and disparities in income levels. Engagement in economic activity is one of the prime criteria for becoming empowered. Sinha in 1971 has found that the opportunities of higher wages in urban areas is a responsible factor for the lower participation of urban women. He stated that the relatively high wages offered to male workers in most activities in urban areas might reduce the economic pressure on women’s work. The census data in this study points towards the more economic empowerment of rural women than the urban one, which means in India, rural women’s work participation is higher than that of urban women. At the national level, 30.03% of rural women are engaged in the workforce and in urban it is only 15.44%, about half of the rural. Except for Delhi and Chandigarh, all the states and UTs have recorded the same result at the national level, i.e. women living in urban areas are proportionally less engaged in economic activity as compared to rural counterparts. However, the magnitude of women’s work participation differs among the states. There are eighteen states/UTs for rural and urban where the work share is higher than the national level for the respective categories.

Rural women WPR in India

Urban women WPR in India

From the regional pattern of women’s work participation, there is a clear division between south and north India in both the cases of rural and urban women. Women’s work participation is comparatively lower in northern states than in the southern states of India, and mainly this feature is more prominent in urban women’s work participation (Figs.  1 and 2 ). The lower WPR in the north seems to reflect strong cultural and religious factors and less the socio-economic status concerns, which are more robust in the more developed and educated South and West [ 31 ]. On the other side, in the northeast states, women’s work participation is higher in both the rural and urban areas; however, in all cases, rural women’s work participation is greater than its urban counterpart. The active involvement of women in northeast India is that in this region, a large section of the total population is covered by tribal people and different studies have already discovered that the work participation among tribal women is very high. Even some tribal communities follow the matriarchal social system in this region, which leads women to engage in the workforce in a large number.

The maximum work share for rural women has been recorded in Nagaland (52.26%) followed by Himachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and Sikkim; the minimum was in Delhi (9.72%) followed by Lakshadweep, Chandigarh and Punjab. On the other side, the highest work participation for urban women has been noticed in Manipur (33.17%) followed by Mizoram, Nagaland and Sikkim; and the lowest was in Jharkhand (10.07%) followed by Bihar, Lakshadweep and Delhi. It is a striking fact that in the country’s capital state, i.e. Delhi, only 10.6% of urban women are engaged in work; however, in this state, the share of the urban population is 97.50% and 46.48% of it is female. As per NSSO data, urban women work participation in Delhi has been steadily declining for women i.e. 8.8% of urban women above the age of 15 years were engaged in economic activity in 2004-05, which decreased to 8% in 2009-10.

From another angle, the gap between rural and urban women’s work participation also varies from − 1.81 to 30.65%. The negative gap indicates the proportion of urban women’s work share is more significant than its rural counterpart, and a positive gap indicates the opposite. At the national level, the gap was 14.59%. There were only two UTs, namely Chandigarh and Delhi where negative gap has been recorded i.e. -1.81% and − 0.88% respectively. On the other hand, the highest positive gap between rural and urban was in Rajasthan (30.65%), which is more than double compared to the national level gap. Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh and Nagaland were the states where the gap was very high. In Andaman & Nicobar Island the gap was least i.e. 0.16% and for the states it was in Punjab and Goa.

3.2 Spatial view of women’s engagement in the workforce based on literacy status

According to Das and Pathak (2012), literacy is an effective tool for empowerment [ 32 ] and Tripathy and Raha in 2019 considered that literacy is the parameter that reflects women empowerment precisely [ 33 ]. A person’s literacy helps to learn new skills and acquire knowledge quickly, which increases the chance of getting a job. It means there is a positive relationship between literacy status and employment opportunities. Thus, literate women with employment make them more empowered. Chandna et al. in 1980 found that the literacy rate of the urban population is significantly high compared to the rural population in the developing country [ 34 ]. In addition to this, it is also found that the literacy rate of urban females is much higher than their rural counterparts. Generally, for urban women it is easy to engage in any workforce as the literacy rate is higher among them than in the rural. However, in India the scenario is quite different. There was a sharp decline in the work participation rate of urban women during the transition from illiteracy to literacy from 1901 to 1961 [ 30 ]. At present, there is no change in the situation. As per the 2011 census database of India, at the national level for urban the share of literate women workforce out of total literate women was only 15.76%, which is very less compared to its rural counterpart i.e. 26.04%. In Punjab and three UTs i.e. Chandigarh, Delhi and Andaman & Nicobar Island, the percentage share of literate women work participation was higher in urban areas than rural areas. Except for these, in all the states/UTs proportion of literate women engaged in the workforce was greater in rural areas than its urban counterpart. At the national level and in most states/UTs the proportion of literate rural women is more involved in different economic activities than the urban. Even in Delhi, only 11.78% of urban literate women are in the workforce, which is less than the national level.

From figure no. 4, the regional disparity is sparkling in that in Western and Northern India literate urban women work participation is low compared to Southern and North-Eastern parts. This is because most of the patriarchal societies in the North and North-West purdah (veil) system are still practised which perpetuates women’s dependency and curtails their freedom [ 35 ]. Among the states, literate women’s work share varies from 9.10 to 56.80% for the rural (Fig.  3 ); and for urban it was 9.12 to 36.60% (Fig.  4 ). The maximum work participation of literate women in the rural area has been recorded in Nagaland followed by Himachal Pradesh and Mizoram. More than half of rural literate women are engaged in economic activities in all three states. Manipur is at the top of the list for urban, followed by Mizoram, Nagaland and Sikkim. On the other side lowest work share in rural has been found in Delhi followed by Punjab and Chandigarh. In urban minimum work share by literate women has been recorded in Jharkhand along with Bihar, Rajasthan and Gujarat. From another angle of view, the gap between rural and urban women work share based on literacy status was 10.28% at the national level. Himachal Pradesh and Nagaland have positioned in the upper part of the list of literate women work participation for both the rural and urban as the schooling revolution has raised the literacy status in general and women in particular in Himachal Pradesh [ 36 ], however the gap has been recorded highest in these states i.e. 29.22% and 27.43% respectively. Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand are the states where the gap is more than double the national average. In Daman & Diu, Goa and Jammu & Kashmir the gap was very low. On the other side, in some states, a negative gap has been recorded where a higher proportion of literate women are engaged in the workforce in urban compared to their rural counterparts. Andaman & Nicobar Island, Punjab, Delhi and Chandigarh have fallen in this category. Because of higher mechanization in agriculture and limited growth of the non-agricultural sector in Punjab, it is difficult to get employment, especially for rural women [ 37 , 38 ]. In Delhi, the opportunity is higher for urban women as there are many IT sectors, startups, and private sectors where they can find a job based on their education and skills.

Rural literate women WPR in India

Urban literate women WPR in India

3.3 Educational level-wise women work share in India

Neoclassical theory predicts that increases in women’s education should usually lead to a rise in women’s labour force participation rate. A higher level of education makes people more productive, so their potential earnings rise, creating a greater incentive to join the labour force and substitute employment for leisure or home labour [ 39 ]. It means educational level positively influences the work participation rate. In contrast to other BRIICs or OECD countries, education and incomes negatively correlate with female labour participation in India [ 31 ]. The high educational requirements for employment in the non-domestic services restrict the employment opportunities of the majority of females who have low or no education [ 40 ]. From this point of view, this section has measured the educational level-wise women’s work share in rural and urban areas. The result reveals that in India at the national level, positive relation of the workforce exists with the educational level in rural and urban areas. It means the proportion of work share increase with the respective higher educational level. A similar result has been observed in most states at the national level.

Differences in the occupational pattern, variation in the educational requirements for entry into jobs, and differences in income levels appear to be responsible for urban-rural differences in female activity rates [ 40 ]. As of the census 2011, the proportion of women who have the below matric level and secondary level educational background is more engaged in the workforce in rural India, about more than double compared to urban women (Table  1 ). Like the national level, in all the states of the country percentage share of female work participation is higher in the rural region for these two educational levels. In other words, there are none of the states in India where the share of below matric and secondary level educated women workforce is higher in the urban region. For rural, Nagaland has recorded maximum women work share for both the educational level. The highest work participation for urban women has been noticed in Mizoram for the below matric category; however, it is Manipur for the secondary level. Not only have these states, but also in most of the north-east states of India the women work participation rate with these educational qualifications is much higher for both the rural and urban compared to other parts of the country. On the other side in the capital of the country i.e. Delhi the work share is lowest for both the rural and urban regions, i.e. less than 10%. From another angle of view, in Himachal Pradesh the gap of rural-urban women’s work participation was high for below matric and matric level, i.e. 34.21% and 36.07% respectively. In most south and western Indian states, the gap is higher for both the level of education compared to other parts of the country.

The high unemployment rate among educated women in urban and rural areas also suggests that many women would like to work if suitable jobs are available [ 40 ]. The proportion of graduated women of rural India is more engaged in the workforce than the graduated urban women (Table  1 ). As per the 2011 census, 33.92% of graduated rural women have been recorded as employed at the national level, whereas it was only 28.62% in urban. Only six states/UTs namely Punjab, Chandigarh, Delhi, Arunachal Pradesh, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Kerala, and Puducherry had a higher proportion of graduated urban women are involved in economic activities as compared to their rural counterparts. However, in the rest of the states/UTs the scenario is the opposite. In Mizoram, the majority of graduated women from rural and urban are engaged in the workforce, i.e. 71.65% and 64.25%. All the north-eastern states have recorded higher women workforce of this educational level. However, in Delhi the proportion of graduated working women in urban is only 27.54%.

It has been noticed that women from rural areas are more involved in economic activities until graduation. When it comes to the technical and postgraduate levels, urban women access more working opportunities than their rural counterparts. Because of that, in the field of technical diplomas and technical degrees or postgraduate urban women’s work share is higher at the national level and in most states (Table  1 ).

3.4 Work participation scenario of married women

The marital status of women is an essential factor for analysing women’s work participation. Many studies have found that husband’s income leads to the withdrawal of women from the labour force through a household income effect. There is a lower probability of women being in the labour force when their household income is higher apart from their earnings [ 39 , 41 ]. Indian society mainly follows the patriarchal system, where men are the principal earning members. As a result, married women entirely depends on their husband and don’t have the decision-making power of the family. In most cases, they feel powerless and experience domestic violence. NFHS-4 database reveals that more than 30% of married women have had faced domestic violence committed by their husbands. In most cases, they prefer to be silent about the violence happening to them and not take any legal action as they are not economically independent. Generally, married women engaged in the different paid workforce are more empowered and can make their own decisions. She can also contribute to the household’s expenditure, which leads to better education for their children and her family’s economic well-being. This financial empowerment gives her the strength to raise their voice against the violence that happens to them. It means that married women’s decision-making power reduces domestic violence [ 42 ]. Thus, women need to be economically independent even after marriage. However, in India the scenario is quite different; particularly for urban women it is very disappointing (Table  2 ). At the national level, only 20.29% of married urban women are involved in economic activities as per the 2011 census. Though the proportion of married women work participation in rural was satisfactory. About half of the rural women (48.08%) were engaged in the workforce even after marriage, which was more than double compared to their urban counterparts. Among the states of India, Chandigarh was the single state where the urban married women’s work share (21.33%) was higher compared to rural (20.30%). The maximum married women workforce for rural has been recorded in Nagaland (84.58%) followed by Chhattisgarh, Arunachal Pradesh and Rajasthan. On the other side for urban, Manipur ranked top holding 48.76% of married women in the workforce. It means none of the states/UTs where half of its urban married women were involved in economic activities. However, for rural there were seventeen states/UTs where the proportion of married working women was more than half of its total married women. In Delhi, the married women work participation was lowest for rural and urban i.e. 14.08% and 13.67% respectively. It also has come to light that in more than 60% of states of the country, the proportion of married women engaged in economic activity in the rural area is more than double that of its urban counterparts.

3.5 Workshare by women in different job profiles

In census 2011, there are different types of occupational categories. However, in this study the occupations are mainly classified into three categories i.e. high, mid and low profile. Legislators, senior officials and managers, technicians, professionals and associate professionals have been categorised as high-profile jobs. There are clerks, service workers, shop and market sales workers, skilled agricultural and fishery workers, craft and related trades workers, plant and machine operators, and assemblers in the mid-profile job. At the last, elementary occupations have been included in the low-profile job. In this section of the study, the percentage women work share out of the total workforce in different job profiles for rural and urban areas has been portrayed. In high and mid-profile jobs, urban women should come forward as they are more educated and more familiar with the opportunities. However, the result is different from the expectation (Table  3 ). As of census 2011, at the national level work share by rural women was 29.53% out of total rural high profile jobholders, though in urban the percentage was only 25.02. At the state level the scenario differs from one state to another. Maximum high-profile job share by women has been reported from Meghalaya i.e. 46.87% and 44.83% respectively in the rural and urban areas. In Delhi this share was only 23.60% by the urban women. There were only ten states/UTs i.e. Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Haryana, Delhi, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Chhattisgarh and Lakshadweep where the high profile job share by its urban women was more remarkable than its rural counterpart. However, in the rest of the states/UTs the scenario was its opposite, which means the rural women’s work share in high profile jobs was higher than the urban. On the other hand, in the mid-profile job, at the national level the urban women’s work share was only 13.89%, whereas in the rural area it was much higher i.e. 23.41%. Like the high-profile job, the maximum women work share in the mid-profile job for both the rural (45.61%) and urban (42.64%) area was from a north-east state i.e. Manipur. The database also reveals that except for Chandigarh, Delhi, Mizoram, Goa and Puducherry in the rest of all the states/UTs the women’s work share of rural areas in the mid-profile job was higher as compared to its urban women counterpart. From the spatial point of view, it has been found that in India’s south and northeast states, the proportion of women engaged in high and mid-profile jobs was much higher in rural and urban areas than in other parts of the country. Particularly in north India, it has been noticed that women’s proportion of participation in the high and mid-profile jobs was much lower. It means there is a spatial variation of women’s workforce across the country. Evans (2020) argued that women residing in the south and north-east India are more educated, own more assets, can choose their life partner and move freely compared to the north and north-west India [ 43 ]. Because of the conservative social norms and customs, women are more constrained in the country’s northern states. On the other hand, in northeast India, some ethnic groups believe in matrilineality and follow the matriarchal social system. It gives higher status to women in their society and empowers them to do the job of their own choice.

3.6 Economic empowerment index (EEI) of rural-urban women in India

In this section, the Economic Empowerment Index (EEI) of women for rural and urban areas in each state/UTs has been discussed. As already mentioned, higher index values indicate greater economic empowerment of women and vice versa. From the output of the index, it is clear that rural women are more economically empowered and independent at the national level than their urban counterparts (Figs.  5 and 6 ). The EEI score for women in rural India is 0.37, much higher than in urban India scored 0.23. This result might be the outcome of NREGA and several studies have emphasized the importance of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) in raising female labour force participation and wage equality. It was enacted in 2005 and guarantees 100 days of work per year, for a minimum salary fixed by the state (same for men and women), for all rural households willing to do unskilled manual labour with quotas for women [ 31 ]. According to existing literature, this programme has significantly impacted rural employment, increasing both public and private employment and casual wages [ 44 ]. Abraham in 2013 also argues that the rising incomes of Indian households have enabled Indian women to withdraw from the labour market. Later on, Klasen and Pieters in 2015 have confirmed that rising levels of household income play an important role in declining rates of women’s labour force participation [ 45 ].

Rural Women EEI in India

Urban Women EEI in India

The EEI indicates a wide spatial variation of women empowerment scenarios in rural and urban India. Tripura, Chandigarh, West Bengal, Puducherry, Kerala and Lakshadweep are the states/UTs where urban EEI is greater than the national average for rural women. On the other side, the opposite result has been discovered in Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat where rural EEI is higher compared to the national average i.e. 0.37, however for urban women it is less than the mean of national level. Nagaland has recorded maximum EEI holding 0.91, followed by Mizoram and Manipur. For the urban women highest EEI has been found in Mizoram i.e. 0.93, followed by Manipur and Nagaland. This scenario indicates that rural and urban women are more economically empowered in northeast India than in the rest of the states/UTs of the country. On the other hand, for urban women EEI, a division has been noticed between the northern and southern states of the country. From the spatial point of view it is clear that in the states of central and north India economic empowerment status of urban women is very dissatisfactory. However, for rural women this condition is much better. Even in the country’s capital state, i.e. Delhi urban women EEI has recorded only 0.12, which is about half of the national level, which also reflects the pathetic condition of urban women in the context of the economic milieu.

3.7 Present situation of rural and urban women workshare from periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS)

In PLFS (2019-20), the percentage of persons in the labour force in the total population working or seeking or available for work is defined as Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR). The percentage of employed persons out of the total population is considered as Work Participation Rate (WPR), and Unemployment Rate (UR) represents the percentage of unemployed persons. LFPR and WPR are positive economic empowerment indicators, which means a higher value indicates more empowerment. On the other hand, UR is a negative indicator and lesser the value greater the economic empowerment. The result of the PLFS database indicates that the scenario did not improve much even in 2020. Like the census 2011, rural women’s situation is better compared to their urban counterparts. The PLFS data from 2017 to 2020 shows that the LFPR of rural women was higher all the year than the urban. It means the increasing rate of women LFPR share in rural is greater and because of that, the gap between rural and urban women LFPR is rising every year. Not only the LFPR, the result is also similar for the women WPR. On the other side, in every PLFS, the women UR is higher in urban and the decline rate of urban women UR is prolonged; however, the UR for rural women is very less (Table  4 ).

PLFS 2019-20 database represents the state-wise spatial scenario of women LFPR, WPR and UR in India. Table  5 shows that at the national level, women LFPR in rural was 24.7% and in urban it was only 18.5; however the share varied from 6.4 to 59.3% for rural and 6.1 to 34.6% for urban. In India, there were only eight states/UTs for urban where one-fourth women come under LFPR, for rural the number was twenty-four states/UTs. In 2019-20, in Daman & Diu and five states i.e. Manipur, Goa, West Bengal, Assam and Haryana the LFPR of urban women was higher as compared to the rural women. In the rest of the states and UTs it was the opposite, which means rural women were more engaged or seeking or available for work than their urban counterparts. Because of that gap has been created between rural and urban women LFPR. The maximum gap has been found in Dadra & Nagar Haveli (42.2%) followed by Himachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Sikkim. On the other side, at the national level women WPR in rural and urban region were 24.0% and 16.8% respectively. Like LFPR, the women WPR in the rural area was more than half of its total women population in Dadra & Nagar Haveli (59.3%), Himachal Pradesh (53.5%) and Sikkim (53.2%); however there was none of the states where urban women WPR share was like this. Even in Delhi rural women LFPR and WPR both were higher. Bihar was the state where the lowest share of women LFPR and WPR has been noticed for rural and urban sectors. In thirty states/UTs the rural women WPR is higher than the urban women WPR; only Chandigarh added in the list of greater women WPR in urban along with the six states/UTs where rural women LFPR was less as compared to urban (Table  5 ). UR also represents a similar result. There were only four states, namely Chandigarh, Lakshadweep, Manipur and Goa, where the UR of rural women was higher than the urban women; in the rest of India, the result was the opposite. At the national level, rural women UR was 2.6% and for urban women it was 8.6%. These results from the PLFS 2019-20 database indicate that rural women are more involved in the workforce and economically empowered than their urban women counterparts in most states.

4 Conclusions

In the contemporary world of globalization and liberalization, economic empowerment is the foremost pillar to be independent. Financial independence make the people to enjoy their rights properly and to play an important role in the decision making within and outside households which is very important to live with dignity and honour. Financial independence would come through engagement in paid work. Unfortunately, women’s workforce participation in India is less even after seven decades of independence. Particularly for urban women the work participation is not satisfactory. It is a concerning issue that the proportion of women are less engaged in the workforce in urban even after the greater job opportunities and availability of higher remuneration compared to rural areas. A similar scenario has also been experienced for literate women. Although literacy enriches the women to be engaged in the workforce, little share of urban literate women has been found in economic activity in most of the states/UTs of the country. On the other side, the participation of rural literate women in different paid work fields is much higher than the urban counterpart. Similar reflection has appeared in the analysis of women’s attainment of educational level in work participation. Excluding technical/professional degree holders, for the rest of the educated women with different levels work participation in the urban area is lesser than the rural area in most of the states/UTs of the country. In this regard, states should focus on the workforce of literate women in urban areas, whether they face discrimination to get a job or limited job opportunities in the different sectors because of their gender. If this is the case, the administration should take proper actions because jobs should be given based on education and skills, not gender. In many cases, even after being educated, they become unemployed because of a lack of suitable job opportunities. It is not about their preferences or choices; it’s about the discrimination and inequality they usually face in the workplace. From this point of view, the central government should also introduce national policies and laws to ensure a friendly working environment for women and should widely promote it. Non-government organizations like NGOs can come forward for women’s rights in the workplace and drive awareness programmes.

In the patriarchal society, domestic violence against women and suppression of their voice is frequently flashed in the news. It is essential to be independent to raise her voice against the violence that happens to them and can bear her own life even after divorce/separation to get rid of this situation. The study has explored that the participation in the workforce of urban married women is significantly less, though most of the states/UTs married rural women work share is satisfactory. In addition to these, another striking feature found in the study is that the share of rural women workers is associated with high profile and mid-profile jobs compared to the urban working women. Lastly, the overall analysis is reflected in EEI, which proves that rural women are more economically empowered than their urban counterparts. It means rural women are more independent, can make their own decisions, and are more self-confident.

All the inferences have been drawn here based on the Census data of 2011, which was conducted almost more than a decade ago. Due to the contemporary situation of World and particularly in India, census supposed to be collected in 2021 for collecting ground-level data has not been possible yet. So, the study is restricted to 2011 census data. To strengthen the backdated data, the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2019-20 database published by the Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation of India has been used here and that too is available only for giving trace of LFPR, WPR and UR. But, the striking feature is that there is no difference between the two time periods data about the women work participation scenario in urban and rural India. With the data limitation, the future prospects of that study is that with the upcoming census the present scenario can be analysed in comparison with the past scenario. Again, it is expected that, urban women work participation would not be exceeding than rural counterpart as during COVID 19 pandemic urban areas were more exposed to the threat than the rural areas and urban working women suffered a lot becoming jobless.

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Biswas, B., Banu, N. Economic empowerment of rural and urban women in India: A comparative analysis. Spat. Inf. Res. 31 , 73–89 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41324-022-00472-3

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In developing countries, women’s empowerment is a major concern. Several efforts were made to tackle this issue as the aims of poverty reduction and development cannot be achieved without giving attention to women’s empowerment. Over the past decades, microfinance institutions (MFIs) have appeared as crucial tools not only to address the issue of poverty but also particularly to empower women. Resultantly, a huge number of studies focus on the relationships between MFI and women empowerment. However, in the context of rural areas of Pakistan, the research is limited. Therefore, the objective of this study is to investigate the role of MFI in women’s empowerment in Pakistan so that the research will facilitate MFIs and policymakers in strengthening the link between MFIs and women entrepreneurship. We have used a qualitative methodology, using primary data collected through in-depth interviews and a focus group discussion with six female borrowers of Rural Community Development Programs (RCDP). The empirical results provide valuable insights into the efforts made by RCDP to empower women and combat poverty by encouraging women’s entrepreneurship. Hence, this paper not only examines empowerment, which women are attaining from microfinance but also assists MFIs to know about their significance in developing the economy. The paper is significant for MFI practitioners to develop policies for boosting women’s entrepreneurship and to help their existing women clients with efficient training and supervision.

Introduction

Microfinance has a unique ideological demand as compared to charity. It is particularly designed to support poor people. However, it is a long-term process that enables the poor to improve their living standards in an effective manner [ 39 , 41 , 74 ]. In particular, when we talk about microfinance from the perspective of women, the role of benefactors of microfinance seems important in making it a relatively effective resource for poverty alleviation, the stability of economic growth, and women empowerment [ 25 , 39 , 41 ].

The difference between male and female ratios is not considered significant, but in several areas, women are provided less importance and power in comparison with men [ 29 , 37 ]. Women around the world have little control over their assets and have less political power. Further, they do not have a lot of properties to their name [ 58 , 68 , 87 ]. Due to a lack of security saved in the financial sector, women faced several difficulties during the financial crisis period which lasted from 2007 to 2008 [ 52 ]. Similarly, it is crucial to understand the impact of the recent crisis of COVID-19 which affected all businesses badly and also threatened world health security [ 81 ].

However, several researchers have questioned this statement. The classification of all expected benefits and disadvantages of MFIs is still in the initial phase. We are still discovering how to improve the living standards of poor women and their families. This study aims to broaden existing knowledge about the role of MFIs in empowering women in rural Pakistan.

In emerging economies, MFIs and women empowerment is considered to be one of the most effective tools for poverty alleviation by particularly focusing on women [ 62 , 87 ]. Certainly, women are one of the most important parts of society and without their presence, societies cannot improve [ 23 ]. Women empowerment leads to the increased participation of females in the workforce, the capability to decide, and poverty reduction. Thus, an increase in their income will not only prove beneficial for their family but will also have a very positive influence on the economy [ 58 ]. Another study investigated the nonlinear effect of the education level on the ecological footprint by incorporating the variation in the population and income structures and recommended crucial policies regarding education levels and environmental sustainability [ 82 ].

In developing countries, all businesses are male-dominated and females have to suffer from discrimination in most of the phases whether it is their personal life or professional life. However, financial segregation seems complicated for developed nations regardless of the gender factor. Financial stability is a key concern for developing as well as economically challenged countries as these economies do not have a stable financial environment and well-established institutions [ 42 , 43 ]. The presence of poor health facilities, underdeveloped financial industries, illiteracy, and weak infrastructure have raised serious problems for developing nations. To consider the requirements of financially excluded women, MFIs step forward to help those women in establishing new endeavors [ 55 ]. As a result, non-government organizations and government agencies decided to provide subsidized loans for a better lifestyle of people and poverty alleviation. Prior researchers appreciated the initiative of such investments (for example, [ 25 , 60 ]), but disproportion has been observed in these investments from the side of rich landlords or agencies. To tackle this issue, some highly effective alternative social networks, social collaterals, and credit scoring are needed here to approach the poorest women [ 57 ]. Moreover, women in more rigid cultural settings are likely to face a higher risk of domestic violence because economic empowerment intervenes with patriarchy and expedites change in rigidly defined gender roles [ 27 , 28 ]. Therefore, the need to address gender power imbalance and existing gender roles need to be taken into account before making interventions to empower women. It is found that the main body of the related existing literature primarily discussed only those factors that played a key role in the supply side of agriculture finance and microloans. A few past studies have also focused on the demand side of microfinance loans. However, the study of Guirkinger and Boucher [ 21 ] and the study of Ashraf and Ali [ 7 ] have highlighted the possible hurdles of the demand side of microfinance loans faced by smallholders. These obstacles include complex application procedures and complexity in providing loan securities. The seminal work of Garikipati et al. [ 18 ] reveals that the process of providing loans to the poor is uncertain, and is not easily generalized. So, people should be careful to utilize this development tool. However, it is clear that these loans provide financial benefits for poor women in developing new endeavors [ 71 ] and also act as a smart policy to help the poor [ 10 ]. Irrespective of the talk of “gender neutrality,” MFI clients that are women of immobile poor backgrounds have a lower default record as compared to men. MFI start-ups usually have significant and underreported economic effects because the poor women who work within households are not getting the standard pay and have limited start-up funds.

Brière and Szafarz [ 13 ] reported that MFIs have now become a risk-averse thing and it is “financialized,” i.e., MFIs now act as mainstream financial institutions. On the other hand, MFIs are considered a good source of financial support for women in starting new businesses and a tool to eliminate poverty in the country but this fact is not applicable universally because MFIs can also appear as an enigma in providing microfinance access to women. In various literature studies, researchers have focused on savings and credit products MFIs. It has been found that research studies are showing great interest in microfinance. Therefore, we aim to explore how MFI can lead to women’s empowerment and entrepreneurship. Furthermore, we also decided to investigate the possible benefits of microfinance for women from RCDP’s microcredit program.

Problem statement

One of the objectives of microfinance is to enhance women’s empowerment and to generate employment opportunities by promoting self-employment that consequently improves the social well-being of poor people. Most of the existing studies, mainly in economics, have only focused on how MFIs lending helps in poverty alleviation, rather than analyzing its impact on social and financial empowerment and new venture creation by women. The majority of the past studies were quantitative [ 9 , 15 , 17 ], while there were a few qualitative studies applied in various contexts that analyzed the impact of MFIs in enhancing women’s empowerment but still substantial studies are not available which explores specific lived experiences of women borrowers when they avail microloans and how they utilize that loan in starting their businesses. Therefore, this study aims to enhance the understanding of the role of microfinance from the viewpoint of beneficiaries in improving their empowerment and entrepreneurial development.

Significance of the study

Pakistan is a developing country and the majority of its population is living under the poverty line and are mostly unaware of different sources of financial facilities. MFIs particularly focus on such rural areas in which most of the people are un-bankable and marginalized. This study contributes to the extant literature, as it explores the lived experiences of women borrowers regarding empowerment and entrepreneurial development. To get deeper insights into the structural meaning of empowerment analyzed by considering participants’ histories, lived experiences, and social interactions, we used a qualitative approach that relies on in-depth interviews and a focus group under the case study research design. This study provides valuable insights into how MFIs are making women socially and financially empowered. Also, how microfinance helps in women-led ventures’ creation process. To investigate how microfinance is increasing women’s empowerment, we deduced the following sub-objectives.

To explore how women become socially empowered after getting micro-financed.

To figure out how women become financially empowered after getting micro-financed.

To determine how microfinance increases women’s entrepreneurship.

Literature review

• Microfinance

Microfinance programs have been playing a dominant role in poverty alleviation since long ago [ 40 ]. The vision behind the growth of microfinance is to pull the poor toward the entrepreneur side by giving them enough credit to achieve this goal. However, microfinance usually considers one assumption, i.e., the beneficiaries have adequate social capital, human capital, and other required assets for expanding their small-scale businesses. This indicates that the lack of credit is the only prominent hurdle experienced by poor women [ 73 ]. This assumption seems quite complicated because the growth of even a small business requires a lot of competencies, knowledge, expertise, and abilities [ 2 ]. Another major issue is that microfinance faces difficulty to approach the right poor people [ 16 ]. In the light of practical aspects, microfinance refuses the poorest division of people from borrowing money. This violates its role in approaching very poor applicants [ 14 , 83 ]. Furthermore, the poorest household people who are availing the benefits of microfinance still lack the proper technical skills that are necessarily required for business. The background of microfinance shows it is an essential tool to alleviate poverty, it works by receiving donations and lending money to poor people. Microfinance programs disregard the non-income parameters of poverty such as health, security, and education [ 11 ]. The study of Shaw [ 64 ] explains how the poorest households possess limited formal education. Also, poor health and undernutrition play a vital role in limiting the overall productivity of such households. The lack of education results in severe illiteracy which can badly affect the poor and make them unable to properly understand the effective working procedure of loans. Famous examples include Akhuwat, AGAHE Pakistan, AMRDO Foundation, non-bank microfinance companies, and many more.

Measuring empowerment

The study of Malhotra et al. [ 47 ] reports that the identification of empowerment as a primary development tool has been done, but still, institutions such as the World Bank and development agencies haven’t introduced an authentic method for estimating and analyzing the tracking variations in various levels of empowerment. Researchers define empowerment as a dynamic procedure that is complex to measure. The reason behind this is that empowerment is related to social, economic, and political challenges as well [ 63 ]. The spiritual, social, political, and health factors make the complete empowerment measurement procedure and these all factors are interconnected with each other. The term empowerment can also be expressed as a way of independent decision making, identification, and utilization of resources [ 1 ]. The literature reveals that empowerment is a multidimensional concept and it can be assessed under multiple dimensions [ 31 ]. This study primarily focuses on the influential impact of microfinance on women’s empowerment in the context of the financial and social aspects. This is because the financial and social aspects of women’s empowerment help increase the development of both the quality and quantity of existing human resources. These two aspects are proven as critical factors in enhancing the development of a society.

Meaning of women’s empowerment

There is significant diversity in the agendas, emphases, and terminologies used for describing women’s empowerment. Many papers have defined empowerment and its measurement approaches. The most common terms used in the extant diverse approaches use power, choice, control, and the option to describe women’s empowerment [ 72 , 78 ]. However, it is still confusing to say whether the terms “empowerment”,” “gender equality,” “women’s autonomy,” and “women’s status in society” are similar or different concepts. The term women empowerment has been conceptualized mostly as an outcome or a capacity or some means to an end, and a process of achieving power [ 35 , 54 ].

Microfinance and women’s empowerment

Women are the main target audience of microfinance programs. This credit amount not only helps poor women to grow economically but also improves gender equality, the status of women within the family, their health, and their education level [ 35 ]. Moreover, women are examined as a good credit risk by microfinance programs due to their increased propensity to repay loans [ 24 ]. In contrast, men are more interested in moving their money toward risky business practices and are at high risk to consume this money on tobacco, gambling, or drinking [ 20 ]. However, Goetz and Gupta [ 20 ] also highlighted that a significant percentage of women’s loans are directly invested in business activities by their male relatives, but the liability of repayment goes to women borrowers. The recent literature primarily discusses the evaluation process of microfinance programs [ 3 , 38 , 65 ] in the context of the well-being of borrowers [ 14 , 50 ] and empowerment capabilities of women [ 61 ]. The reporting of these evaluations reveals some conflicting conclusions, and it still tells that borrowers have an absence of accounts for themselves and this impact of credit can affect their lives [ 35 ]. There is limited evidence in the literature on how the poor perceive the process of microfinance loans. In addition, the existing literature has limited scope regarding the “transformative process” of entrepreneurship which reveals the lives of those needy people who are living in extreme poverty [ 76 ]. In response, this study fills the gap in the literature by examining how most disadvantaged borrowers or potential borrowers themselves perceive and experience microfinance in a context characterized by extreme poverty, one where family responsibility and entrepreneurial activities are closely intertwined.

A study reported that 95% of Grameen’s borrowers were females and this percentage kept on raising till 2011. Similarly, Aghion and Morduch [ 6 ] highlighted that 71% of total borrowers of MFIs were women. Further, past researchers have also pointed out that MFIs target women because their default rates are very low as compared to men [ 5 , 36 ]. Because of this reason, MFIs have launched several innovative schemes to financially support their female clients. MFIs play a crucial role in enhancing the empowerment of women as it boosts their resources, increase return on human capital by improving their affordability, and consequently improve their living standards.

Social empowerment of women

Women’s social empowerment refers to having a supportive environment by using different affirmative programs and policies for the empowerment of women along with the provision of easy and equal access to necessities of life [ 48 ]. In the field of development, empowerment has become a catchword, with a specific focus on poverty alleviation and the political addition of marginalized groups of women [ 49 ]. Microfinance has proved socially beneficial for women [ 35 ]. In a pivotal study, Mahmud [ 46 ] described that microfinance institutions have a significant positive influence on women’s social empowerment as it substantially improves their control of income spending and intra-household decision-making power, which resultantly enhances their welfare. Sinha et al. [ 67 ] found that women’s participation in MFIs enhanced their capability to spend money, mobility, and dominance in household decision making. Further, Montgomery and Weiss [ 51 ] concluded women’s participation in MFIs leads to enhance family decision making and found that family landholdings, media exposure, and institutional access are key determinants of women empowerment [ 26 ]. Similarly, it was found that savings impact is more significant on women as compared to men as it enhances their decision-making power related to family planning, family expenses, recreation, and their lifestyle [ 8 ].

Therefore, there is a need for an integrated microfinance program comprising education with skill-building training for increasing the capacity building of women and fortifying the relationship between women’s social empowerment and microfinance [ 4 ].

Financial empowerment of women

Many past studies have analyzed women’s empowerment from different perspectives; however, financial empowerment is ignored to some extent. In this study, one of the main objectives is to examine the financial empowerment of women. Past studies have reported that financial empowerment can be understood through three factors; financial literacy, financial attitude, and financial well-being. Financial literacy is inherent in humans and is recognized as the primary privilege of humans. “Financial literacy is the capability of understanding finance” [ 75 ]. Lack of financial knowledge ultimately pulls poor people away from success in financial markets or businesses [ 79 , 86 ]. The importance of financial literacy is equal for men and women. However, it is reported that if women have stronger financial knowledge then they can do effective future planning [ 45 ]. Financial knowledge is related to financial attitude. The financial attitude refers to the capability to manage finances, interest in enhancing financial knowledge, and investment decisions. Past studies revealed that financial knowledge, financial attitude, and financial behavior affect financial empowerment or financial well-being [ 33 , 66 ]. The concept of financial well-being is related to personal traits, knowledge of finance, and attitude. Therefore, the subjective meaning of financial well-being varies from person to person [ 32 ]. Thus, the financial empowerment of women can be assessed by considering financial literacy, financial attitude, and financial well-being.

Research gap

The literature discussed following the structure from the history of microfinance to concepts of women empowerment leads to the discussion on the relationship between women empowerment and microfinance. The literature depicts that different indices were explained in prior research studies giving a quick overview of empowerment but they are limited as they used a few variables, ignored key ontological issues, details, and subjective experiences that deepen the understanding of empowerment [ 9 , 15 , 17 ]. Therefore, this study fills the existing gap as we interviewed women in their natural settings and in their contexts in which they interpreted empowerment from their viewpoints.

Further, there was a strong practical gap regarding the lack of research on how women experienced empowerment and entrepreneurship through microfinance. A majority of the past studies applied quantitative methodology with the top-down approach which focuses on the views of service providers instead of beneficiaries and thus the beneficiaries’ views were not considered. Therefore, it becomes evident that the quantitative approach is not suitable for understanding women’s empowerment because it is a process of realization and only participants can explain what empowerment means to them through their experiences and feelings of becoming empowered. Hence, it is significant to use a qualitative methodology to capture the real feelings and experiences of women. Therefore, we applied the bottom-to-top approach to analyzing the true essence of the lived experiences of women regarding empowerment and entrepreneurship. Thus, this study is based on a case study research design to explore the perspectives of women that how they interpret and understand the phenomenon of empowerment achieved through microfinance in their natural context. Overall, this study enriches the extant literature about women’s empowerment by explicating the complex phenomenon of empowerment through social, financial, and entrepreneurial contexts.

Research question

For exploring the effectiveness of MFIs in terms of women’s empowerment and entrepreneurial development, we propose the main research question of this study as follows;

What is the impact of microfinance on women’s empowerment?

Sub-questions

How does a woman become socially empowered after getting microfinance?

How does a woman become financially empowered after getting microfinance?

To what extent microfinance leads to women’s entrepreneurial development?

Theoretical framework

William’s theoretical model of women’s empowerment.

In this study, two theories as theoretical frameworks are used. The first theory is by Williams [ 84 ] who formed a theoretical model on women’s empowerment. In the development of this model, the innovative insights of Kabeer [ 34 ] were used. Given this theory, empowerment comprises three factors, resources, agency, and achievements. Here, the resources present the supporting factors which are utilized by women to achieve empowerment, the agency presents the ability of the women to achieve their goals, and achievement refers to the success of women in achieving their life goals. Resultantly, the results achieved represent achievements by combining resources with the agency. We have used this model for measuring women’s empowerment.

Status withdrawal theory

The second theory used in this study is the status withdrawal theory, this theory explains that when certain groups of people realize that they are not respected by society. They switch to entrepreneurship for getting respect from society [ 22 ]. Thus, entrepreneurship is a function of status withdrawal. We follow this theoretical framework for understanding the entrepreneurial development among women borrowers. As all women borrowers belong to a poor class so we will explore whether they have any status withdrawal intention behind starting their own business or not (Fig.  1 ).

Conceptual framework of the study

Methodology

This study adopts the case study design approach for the empirical investigation as it inspects a contemporary phenomenon within the real life of participants, particularly when the limits between the context and phenomenon are not visible [ 59 , 85 ]. The case study design is the most suitable design for this study to carefully understand the impact of MFIs on women’s empowerment as it provides more in-depth views about the phenomenon under study.

The variables and themes analyzed in the focus group discussions and in-depth interviews are presented in Table 1 .

Semi-structured interviews

A qualitative method, in particular, semi-structured interviews, and a focus group were employed in this study. We used an interview checklist for the collection of qualitative data as it helps to properly understand the psychology of the participants. Also, it helped us to identify missing information from the participants. All interviews were conducted by telephone. The participants were selected through purposive sampling, as it is widely used in information-rich case studies [ 56 ]. The MFI selected for this study is RCDP, this MFI has played a key role in developing economic activities in communities and it exclusively focuses on women. The sample size consisted of six participants, who are aged 35 or above. Semi-structured interviews were organized in two sections, the first section included background questions based on the loan history of participants at the RCDP, demographic details, and a description of current business progress. The s econd section comprised questions that were related to participants’ viewpoints about their experience of gaining empowerment. For example, respondents were asked to provide in-depth explanations regarding their daily tasks and how their tasks get influenced after getting microloans. We also used sample prompts such as, “What role has microfinance played in your life?” and “Have you experienced any change due to microfinance? How it supported you in establishing your business?” Grand tour questions were also used such as “How would you explain a usual work week?” The grand tour questions lead us to get in-depth information through mini-tour questions for determining the details about certain events and the experience of women borrowers [ 69 ], such as Could you describe to me what you do for the mid-day meal when you are at your business? This helped in inquiring about delicate features such as advantages and changes associated with the role of microfinance in enhancing women’s empowerment. After conducting the semi-structured interviews, a focus group discussion with borrowers was conducted. This discussion helped us to collect data about the socioeconomic factors of women’s empowerment. This method helped us to have firsthand information (Table 2 ).

Focus group

To analyze the experience and interactions among participants, a focus group plays an important role. Through focus groups, we probed answers to the best lending practice, saving plans, and effective interpersonal relationships between members. The group discussion helped us to make certain aspects clearer.

Data analysis, results, and discussion

Developing first-order codes and second-order themes.

For analyzing the data, thematic analysis is used. First, to form codes, the data analysis started with coding iteratively, recorded interviews were used in performing the analysis [ 19 ]. At the initial stage, the data is linked with first-order codes that focus on the main research topic, the impact of MFIs on women’s empowerment. After this, common themes were used to join data fragments together from different but interconnected categories developed in the open coding [ 70 ]. This helped in combining first-order with second-order codes in a more precise manner.

Incorporating first-order codes with second-order themes

In the second phase, the data was revisited to ensure precision in the second-order themes. The existing themes were refined or used to create new second-order themes. We analyzed the constructs for ensuring that the themes are reflecting first-order themes. For example, first-order coding statements related to respondents’ increased level of independence in decision making led us to form a second-order theme explaining “increase in independence in decision-making power.”

Later this statement was defined as “Social Empowerment” described by the first-order coding statements explaining independence to decide without asking anyone. This analysis adds precision in this phase, while simultaneously permitting us to better examine and improve other evolving concepts, such as “being independent.”

Accumulating the theoretical dimensions

After second-order themes, we determined the theoretical dimensions for understanding the interaction among themes. For instance, some themes represented real experiences of social empowerment (e.g., “autonomy in decision making”) while others related to their response to social empowerment (e.g., “confidence in expressing an opinion”). We examined multiple models to check how multiple conceptual models relate to each other, using existing empowerment theory whenever suitable. We evaluated potential models against the data to investigate how emergent theoretical understanding described our research model. Table 3 presents the methodology, presenting the first-order codes, the second-order codes, and the theoretical dimensions that effectively describe the lived experiences of participants and the impact of microfinance in gaining empowerment.

Table 4 reveals the data supporting each second-order theme by presenting that microfinance has proved very beneficial for all six participants. Our main research question was to determine how microfinance increases women’s empowerment. Thus, our results presented that microfinance drastically changed the perception of women borrowers about living an independent life and societal dynamics. Fulfilling the necessities is one of the primary issues of poor people and due to this, they have to earn for each day’s expenses. Further, because of having no savings to rely upon, the lines between households and businesses are often not so clear. All our respondents reveal that now they feel more confident and empowered as compared to their earlier condition. All participants shared that they spend their income on fulfilling their household expenses such as children’s schooling and utility bills. The findings of this study were obtained through thematic analysis which is useful in conducting identification analysis and pattern reporting within data [ 12 ]. This study aimed to determine how microfinance is an effective tool for women’s empowerment, and how microfinance leads to develop entrepreneurial characteristics among women, and how it is useful for women. The conclusions achieved from this study may not become generalizable for the whole population but it is generalizable at a conceptual level [ 30 ].

The study determines the role of RCDP in women’s social and financial empowerment with the help of a case study methodology. We have used focus group discussions with in-depth interviews. We explored the lived experiences of women before and after taking a loan from RCDP and its impact on their social and financial empowerment with a view of William’s theory. In the focus group discussion, all participants shared their lived experiences and in the in-depth interviews, each case was analyzed for understanding the actual circumstances through which each participant has gone through. In this analysis, open-ended questions helped in understanding the real scenarios. The main research objective was to utilize open-ended questions for developing a comfortable association with the participants so that they can share all their lived experiences conveniently. We have selected in-depth interviews and focus groups because these methods were found more suitable for analyzing each case.

Case 1 Participant (1) described when her husband died in a road accident. She became helpless. Her in-laws abandoned her with six children. Then, she applied for the microfinance program of RCDP and was provided with an initial loan worth Rs.75,000/- for establishing a small retail store of food items. In her village, no women were running their retail store. But she took this step to support her children and now she is running a successful business. The credit for her success goes to her decision of taking a loan and starting a new journey in her life. She expressed;

Life became miserable without my husband. It was difficult to feed six children. Without having a source of income and no place to stay. I felt that my life has come to an end. But microfinance helped me to get out of the crisis. Now I am living a peaceful life with my children.

Case 2 Participant (2) shared that she remained in an abusive relationship with her husband for 11 years. Her husband was addicted to drugs. He divorced her after the birth of their seventh daughter. Then, he got married to some other woman. She expressed that she has gone through severe depression during that time when was alone with her daughters. Her mother and sister supported her but financially they were not capable to feed her children.

I was extremely depressed due to my divorce. I had no source of income other than him. I was worried about my daughters. I have four brothers and they also refused to support me at that time. Then, I started weaving and also started a dressmaking business on a small scale after taking a loan from RCDP. Particularly, I was good at making girls’ dresses. Now my mother and sister are living with me and I am supporting my family with my business.

Case 3 Participant (3) expressed that microfinance helped her a lot in supporting her family. Initially, she took a loan of Rs 80,000 to start her business. She shared;

My husband was a plumber but his income was not enough to support the household expenses. Then a time came when my husband couldn’t find any job for three months. We were deprived of all necessities. And we also have three children who were not going to school due to our crisis. Then I asked my husband to start his own business of baking food items. Because I was good at baking. We both decided to take a loan and started our own business. My husband was narrow-minded, initially, he refused to accept me as a partner in his business. But when he realized that only after one week our business showed visible growth. Then he allowed me to help him and we also hired two more workers. Now our children are going to school and we are managing all our household expenses.

Case 4 Participant (4) expressed that her husband was an employee in a garment factory. One day the owner of the factory decided to wind up his business because of a lack of profits. My husband lost his job, he searched a lot for other jobs but he failed to find any suitable job. Then, he died due to a heart attack. She took a loan of Rs 60,000 for purchasing a sewing machine and some clothes. She shared

I was living a happy life with my husband and children but life changed when my husband lost his job. Further his death made the situation even worse. One of my neighbors told me about RCDP. Just because of my children I took a loan and started my own stitching business and now I am in a position to manage my all household expenses.

Case 5 Participant (5) shared that her husband was employed in a workshop. But he lost his job due to the closure of that workshop. They had no other source of money. For four months, her husband searched for another job but he couldn’t find any opportunity. Their children left school because they were not able to pay their fees. Then, she convinced her husband to take a loan and start their own business. Her husband was afraid that we will not be able to repay the loan. Then, they will lose their respect in the family. But she told him that they have no other option and they have to take this risk.

My husband knew how to manage a car workshop so we decided to use the loan amount for starting a business. Gradually our business flourished, and we also managed to repay our monthly loan installments.

Case 6 Participant (6) shared her life experiences by stating that her husband was an electrician and his income was not enough to support the family. They have six children and their school fees were not payable with that income. Thus, she asked her husband to start his own business as a retail store as there was no other store in their area.

I am managing a retail store with my husband. Initially, my husband took all decisions related to savings and asset purchases. But now as I am helping him in managing our retail store. He acknowledges my effort and now we collectively decide how to spend our income. I and my husband started doing all chores together now. We both listen to each other, and collectively make decisions. He respects my suggestions and decisions. As we both couldn’t get a higher education, so we have realized the importance of education. Therefore, we are sending our children to good schools for quality education. The credit for our success and better well-being goes not only to my hard work but to all including my family, friends, and also to RCDP who helped us to build up our lives once again.

We have found that after establishing their own business, women became more confident and self-empowered due to microfinance. They have developed a true belief in their entrepreneurial skills and independent decisions. These women are highly efficient as they not only make a business investment but also save some amount of money for future needs at the same time. Women use their amount of loans in smart investments in some entrepreneurial activities and in providing financial support to their families. But after becoming financially stable, they start saving money for future needs. This indicates the smart and strategic planning of women. After this phase, women are very confident in developing a strong position in their family and taking financial responsibility on their shoulders. These results also find support from past studies [ 53 , 80 ]. Women have developed a serious working attitude toward their profession and are happy for supporting their husbands and family [ 77 ]. Hence, we can say that this all has become possible due to microfinancing as it not only provides financial support to women but also encourages them to contribute positively toward the development of society. [ 44 ]. Also, it plays a prominent role in establishing entrepreneurial knowledge and independent decision-making habit in women. Despite these efforts, many areas such as quality of services and working on new skill development trades, and gender responsiveness need improvement. The present form of this paper is not gender-friendly because it has mainly targeted the female gender and the male gender seems neglected. In addition to tangible development (food access and other necessities of life), it also provides intangible development to women in the form of motivation, self-belief, self-empowerment, confidence, and independent decision making. The findings of the study are in line with William’s theoretical model of women’s empowerment as the participants expressed that they have achieved empowerment by using their resources and agency. Further, the results are also in line with the status withdrawal theory as the participants expressed that they want to become independent because they want respect in society. Hence, our results are in line with the theories.

Microfinance plays a dominant role to motivate and enhance entrepreneurial activities in any country. This study aims to examine the efficiency of microfinance in empowering women in Pakistan. The analysis and results revealed that microfinance is an effective tool that can contribute to the development of women’s empowerment and entrepreneurship. The findings also support the theoretical aspect of William’s theory as women empowerment is being discussed with a view of three dimensions including resources, agency, and achievements. The study contributed to breaking the conventional hurdles levied on women’s decisions and mobility. A developing country needs to focus on the growth and development of entrepreneurship for achieving stability. People find microfinance as an opportunity for themselves as it provides a way to enter into the entrepreneurship field. The six cases elaborated in this study reveal that the RCDP microfinance loan has been proven as a full-time and consistent earning source for the people and helped them a lot in improving their living standards. In the initial stage, the clients operated their business as sole proprietors, and over time, they involved many other people in the business. Thus, microfinance has become a potential source of earning for many needy people.

Hence, this study highlights that microfinance creates a positive and influential impact on rural women. It not only works for the betterment of women but also considers the entire families of those women by supporting them in enhancing their family earnings. In this way, this study will help in increasing the percentage of school-going children and a reduction in child labor due to an increase in family earnings. Although this project is concerned with providing small-scale services still it is contributing a lot toward the growth of Millennium Development Goals related to women’s empowerment, health, child welfare, and poverty alleviation. In light of these results, we came to know that microfinance has a diverse portfolio of benefits. It is not only a source of finance but also a tool that makes women more confident and boosts their morale. The findings indicate that even the small-scale loans taken from RCDP have helped women a lot to grow their socioeconomic and financial position through entrepreneurship which supports the theoretical foundation of the status withdrawal theory. It has benefited females with strong and independent decision-making power. Our results can help policymakers and practitioners to adopt suitable policies that assimilate empowerment in the formation of more effective projects for women. The findings of this study may encourage more women to take part in microfinance projects and entrepreneurial activities.

Limitations and future directions

This study has some limitations. The first limitation is the shortage of time that resulted in designing a moderate sample size as compared to a bigger one. Second, the data collection is done for just one city and is limited to interest-based loans, whereas it has been found that RCDP is also concerned with interest-free loan programs. Third, the study used only six detailed interviews due to the time constraint factor which indicates that the findings cannot be fully generalized as only six cases were taken into account. However, this study has a potential scope in elaborating on all the possible dimensions of the related topic and it would enhance the recognition of women’s empowerment. This paper is dynamic as it covers both practical and theoretical aspects. Keeping in mind the time limitation and resource constraints, the above-discussed six cases can serve as a good starting step to allow the researcher to explore it further and investigate more dimensions in a longitudinal analysis. This study motivates women of our country to take a positive stand and contribute their role in poverty alleviation.

By documenting the limitations of the present study, future researchers are suggested to explore certain areas. Firstly, this study primarily deals with only a single project in the context of the most modern areas of Pakistan, it is recommended to future researchers perform this study in different regions of the country. Secondly, the sample size is limited due to time limitations; hence, future researchers are advised to conduct a study on the related topic by designing a large sample size. Lastly, it would be better for researchers to investigate the sustainability of community-based development projects via localized community-based adjustments with the support of local NGOs’ involvement rather than government funding.

Availability of data and materials

The data analyzed during the current study is available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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A Policy Review of the SEED (Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration) Project: Is the Devil in the Details?

Umar ghuman.

Department of Political Science, Public Administration and Leadership Studies, California State University Stanislaus, One University Circle, Turlock, CA 95382 USA

This review examines the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED) project, a guaranteed income (GI) project that was undertaken in Stockton, California from 2019- 2021. SEED is a collaborative initiative by the Mayor’s Office of Stockton, the Reinvent Stockton Foundation (RSF), and the Economic Security Project (ESF). The purpose of the SEED project was to ascertain the effects of guaranteed income on the well-being of the project recipients, with a focus on the effects of a UBI on participants’ financial and psychological health. This review will study the potential benefits and challenges involved in implementing such a project, from political, social and economic perspectives. The review will also examine a UBI project’s long- and short-term viability, and its impact on a city, and the project’s beneficiaries. The review will aim to provide a balanced understanding of guaranteed income projects, and the means by which they affect recipients as well as other stakeholders, and the possibilities of implementing guaranteed income on a larger scale.

Introduction

This paper provides a policy review for the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration ) (SEED) project. SEED is an acronym for Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, a guaranteed income project initiative that is a collaboration between the city of Stockton and two nonprofit organizations (Rector & Teixeira, 2018 ). According to the SEED website, the aim of the project is to assess a guaranteed income project in its ability to alleviate poverty, social inequality and to measure the effects on the financial and psychological wellbeing of its recipients. Since February 2019, the program has been disbursing $500 a month to a small sample of eligible residents of the city of Stockton.

A policy review about a guaranteed income (GI), or universal basic income (UBI) project is more than examining its impact on the project’s beneficiaries and the positive political goodwill attributed to the program’s leadership and the supporters. As Widerquist ( 2018 ) points out, it is the examination of the larger issues embedded in this policy experiment that are also of interest to policy stakeholders. Questions such as examining long term effectiveness, or whether the policy be can replicated on a more substantive level, and the issue of how will such a scheme be financed tend to be prominent issues. In other words, can the economic, social, cultural effects be observed in a small-scale study such that the study provides generalizability enough to demonstrate large-scale effects? Is the policy permanently sustainable and fiscally responsible? And finally, will it provide lasting community well-being? It is the examination of theses issue that allows for a more substantive and well-rounded examination of the issues surrounding UBI/GI.

Inherent in a policy review regarding UBI and GI, we are also examining policy as a measure of community well-being. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ( 2011 ) “argues that most experts and ordinary people around the world would agree that it requires meeting various human needs, some of which are essential (e.g., being in good health), and includes the ability to pursue one’s goals, to thrive and feel satisfied with their life” (OECD, 2013 ). Moreover, as a measure of community well-being, the OECD frames community well-being as a measure of economic well-being, overall quality of life and sustainability for programming as covered in this review.

This policy review will try and examine the issues mentioned. Firstly, it will examine the past and current scholarly literature on the issue of GI and UBI. Secondly, it will provide a critical review of the SEED project and analyze its aim to improve the economic well-being and quality of life of certain residents. The review examines why the city of Stockton may have been chosen and provides a discussion on the sustainability of future economic and community well-being projects. Finally, this review will provide a conclusions and suggestion for future research on GI projects.

The Arguments for a Guaranteed Income (GI) or Universal Basic Income (UBI)

Widerquist ( 2018 ) defines universal basic income ( UBI) and its variant guaranteed income ( GI) as a “periodic, cash income paid individually to all members of a political community without means test or work requirements” ( 2018 , p.15). The UBI or GI is a regular cash payment provided to members of a community, without the stringent eligibility requirements of a “means” test. A means test refers to a prerequisite that is usually applied in most government assistance programs that ensure that the recipient is awarded the benefit based on a qualifier. For example, Social Security benefits are provided to recipients that qualify based on age, or disability or other means that establish qualification on certain, pre-determined criteria. A UBI, or GI however, tends to have minimal means test requirements. The appeal of a Universal Basic income is intuitive to its proponents as a poverty alleviating mechanism, and the idea has been supported for politicians, economists and philosophers for centuries (Collier, 2020 ). Recently, the idea has once again gained prominence because of its support amongst the prominent Silicon Valley executives such as Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, and presidential candidate Andrew Yang. The primary motives for a guaranteed income benefit are to alleviate unintended and unanticipated negative consequences of poverty that current benefit systems may not be able to fulfill, and that allow recipients top by-pass onerous eligibility requirements, especially as some requirements can be seen as specifically designed to discourage utilization. Additionally, in many instances low-income residents may have needs that a traditional government assistance program is unable to fulfill. As the SEED project itself points out:

Sometimes people require more than food, housing, and medical insurance. They need a new car battery to get to work the next day, or they need cash to pay an unanticipated bill that might otherwise trigger a downward spiral. In these ways, unconditional cash mitigates the capriciousness of life and provides certainty in the midst of chaos. (SEED, 2019 )

While UBI and GI programs have been in proposed policy conversations for poverty alleviation for a while, there have been some recent developments regarding reasons why proponents have renewed arguments for their implementation. One dominant narrative is that the increased automation that is becoming the norm in industries may lead to increased unemployment; and another is that most low-income groups do not possess adequate funding or training to deal with such an unexpected financial burden. Collier ( 2020 ) cites number of studies that have demonstrated that current technological advances may be responsible for increased unemployment, now and in the future. Three of the studies in particular posit that almost half of current jobs could be automated in the future, and as a result, nearly as many jobs would be lost to automation (Collier, 2020 ). Proponents of guaranteed income plans argue that the UBI’s and GI’s may help offset some of the income losses experienced.

This past year’s ongoing recession and resultant unemployment due to the COVID-19 pandemic is another reason to consider a guaranteed income benefit. Past research has shown the inability of a large percentage of U.S. workers to have a financial cushion to deal with unexpected financial burdens. A survey by the Federal Reserve in 2019 demonstrated that over a third of participants would have a difficulty covering an unexpected expense of US $400, i.e., 37% of the participants stated that they would be unable to pay an unexpected expense of $400 using cash, savings, or a credit card paid off at the next statement (Bhutta et al., 2016 ). Twelve percent of the survey participants stated that they would be unable to pay the expense at all (Bhutta et al., 2016 ). The state of affairs becomes more dire when the study explored the issue of “rainy day” funds. Current measures recommend that the average household have savings of at least 3 months of expenses to cover any larger unexpected contingencies that may arise. The survey found that three out of 10 adults stated that they would be unable to cover 3 months of expenses by any means.

This state of affairs has probably been exacerbated by the current recessionary climate, and the economic hardship caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Ståhl and MacEachen ( 2020 ) point out how the financial hardship caused by the pandemic has laid bare issues of financial inequity and economic fragility, especially as it pertains to individuals employed in industries that have been the most hard-hit, such as the food and beverage industry, travel and tourism, and the self-employed “gig” economy. Such industries are not equipped to deal with what Ståhl and MacEachen ( 2020 ) refer to as “extreme external shocks”. While a flexible labor market (a market that has the ability to increase and decrease labor based on demand) is advantageous to employers who can ramp hiring up or down, in a recession where at-risk individuals are unable to remain employed the fragility of their economic situation becomes evident (Collier, 2020 ; Ståhl & MacEachen, 2020 ; Widerquist, 2018 ). The current COVID-19 pandemic “… provokes the question of whether current social security systems are sufficient for security in a flexible economy” (Ståhl & MacEachen, 2020 ). Proponents of UBI/GU schemes argue that a guaranteed basic income could help alleviate such issues for at-risk citizens. Yang ( 2018 ) posits that a guaranteed income would also alleviate the “bureaucratic burden”, that is administrative burden of paperwork, and the added work is lessened both on the government employee, as well as the at-risk citizen who has to ‘prove’ eligibility on a constant basis for traditional social welfare programs. Yang ( 2018 ) and other proponents also predict a trickle up, economic boom; whereby individuals with more disposable income may be able to contribute to economic sectors they have traditionally not had the ability to be a part of. Examples of these could be a treat (a night at the movies), dining out and other recreational pursuits. As a result, proponents argue that a greater amount of economic freedom and more disposable income would lead to the prosperity to other sections of the economy, a “trickle-up” economic boom (Yang, 2018 ).

In terms of social and mental wellbeing being, proponents have posited that GI benefits also includes a greater amount of freed time (since the person isn’t doing multiple jobs or juggling many commitments to make ends meet), allowing for the recipient’s ability to engage in creative pursuits, care for children or aging family members, and so a GI collectively enhances community wellbeing. The stressors associated with poverty and monetary need are well documented, and while GI schemes may not wholly eliminate poverty, they may go some distance towards alleviating it, reducing some of the stressors associated with the constant need for more funding to help with basic needs. Glazer ( 2017 ) also points out that providing a GI check would give recipients creative and entrepreneurial freedom, and so benefit the community, which they participate. Murray ( 2016a , b ) argues against welfare programs, and argues for the use of a GI, stating that a welfare programs are contrary to themes of work, thrift and neighborliness. According to Murray ( 2016a ) “The welfare state is pernicious ultimately because it drains too much of the life from life” (Murray 2016a , p.3). In other words, living on welfare can be a demeaning state of affairs that robs the individual from a sense of self-worth, and makes one’s life and life’s pursuits dependent on the welfare cycle. Providing UBI/GI options to qualified residents alleviate the negative self-conceptualization of being less than the “normal” citizen and gives recipients a greater sense of being part of a community that they can participate in, engage with, and thrive in.

The SEED Project

Distinguishing itself as the first “mayor-led” guaranteed income project, SEED (Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration) is a GI (guaranteed income) project that started in February 2019. One hundred and twenty -five city residents were selected to receive a GI amount of $500 per month for 18 months. The time line has since changed to 24 months to support recipients during the Covid pandemic. The funds have been disbursed without stringent “means” tests, i.e., potential participants of the study were targeted solely based on past measures of self-reported income. The project researchers are Drs. Stacia Martin-West and Amy Castro Baker, who will examine the impact of the funding on the recipients’ wellbeing and their psychological distress as well as their physical functioning (SEED, 2019 ). The project is funded through private donations, and the aim of the project “seeks to confront, address and humanize some of the most pressing problems our country faces: inequality, income volatility, and poverty” (SEED, 2019 , p.1). The vision of the project seems to be to show how SEED “Provides an opportunity to imagine a fair and inclusive social contract that provides dignity for all”.

According to the SEED website, Stockton, California was chosen as the most suitable city in which to have the experiment (SEED, 2019 ). While the city is currently financially solvent and has an economy that is recovering, the city of Stockton filed for bankruptcy in 2012, making it the largest city in the US to have ever done so. As of 2017, the median household income fell below the state’s median, and there is a sizable population of the city living in poverty. According to the website, Welfare INFO the poverty rate in Stockton in 2017 was 22.4% (i.e., one out of every 4.5 residents in Stockton lives in poverty), whereas the 2017 poverty rate in California was at 15.1% (WelfareINFO, 2021 ). With the current recession as a result of the pandemic, it can be assumed that the rate for Stockton may be higher in 2021, and may continue to rise until the pandemic is under control. Stockton is also a highly diverse city with significant populations of citizens that identify as Black, Latino and Asian. Stockton also ranks 18th in the nation in child poverty, and has a high unemployment rate (7.5% in 2019), and only 35% of the city’s students are college ready by high school graduation. These statistics showcase a situation in which guaranteed income experiment would be welcomed, and be beneficial to recipients. The experiment also addresses the barriers of income and development that are associated with embedded structural racism and the resultant systemic poverty, when people of color are denied opportunities for development and self-enhancement. As Michael Tubbs, then Mayor of Stockton (whose office led the program) pointed out:

We need a social safety net that goes beyond conditional benefits tied to employment, works for everyone and begins to address the call for racial and economic justice through a guaranteed income. (Holder, 2021 )

Baker et al. ( 2020 ) describe the SEED experiment as a means to assess how a GI project could co-exist and work alongside existing welfare systems. The actual SEED program disbursement began in February 2019. The SEED websites are currently sharing data from February 2019 till June 2020 (SEED, 2019 ). Some of the data shared in the website is quite revealing especially in terms of its impact on recipients.

Based on the information from the website (SEED, 2019 ), to test this basic income experiment, the researchers drew a sample from Stockton’s residents that had reported an annual median income at or below $46,033. A sample of 4200 households was selected, and a mailer sent explaining qualifications for the SEED project. 475 respondents to the mailer that met the criteria were then randomly assigned into 3 groups. One group would receive the funds and was considered the treatment group ( n = 125). Another comparison group would not receive the funds but would participate in the data collection activities. This group was deemed an “active” control group and used to assess economic, and psycho-social well-being ( n = 200). Finally, a third “passive” control group was identified, and participants in this group do not participate in the data collection but consented to the use of administrative data. The intention behind the passive control and the active control group is to assess the progression of economic psychological well-being of residents who did not receive the funds, to ensure that any changes in the resident’s states of wellbeing are due to the GI funding. The funds were distributed through a debit card provided to recipients, and each month $500 dollars would be uploaded to the card. The expectation of the researchers was that the recipients would use the debit card to make purchases, that researchers would be then be able to track (SEED, 2019 ).

Discussion of Data

Demographically, approximately 70% of the recipients identify as female, with the rest identifying as male, and the comparison groups exhibits a similar gender makeup. Forty-three percent of the recipients worked either full time or part time. Unemployed recipients, i.e., those actively looking, or no longer looking for employment, accounted for 12% of the recipients (less than 2% of the recipients are unemployed and not looking for work). A fifth of the recipients (20%) were disabled, and around 10% were recipients who were stay at home parents, or caregivers.

The data on the current financial situation of the recipients (presumably obtained by June 2020), shows that in spite of the monthly GI infusion of $500, 48 % of the recipients are still “just managing” and 22% are “going into debt”. Only 3% state that they have enough funds left to be able to save some of their money. Implications of this data suggest that a sizable proportion of low-income Stockton residents may be employed but still do not have sufficient means to make ends meet. Clearly welfare and assistance programs may not be sufficient for low-income residents to significantly lift themselves out of their current economic state.

The data also shows that the largest percentage of the purchases from the debit card have been for food (approximately 37%), and the second largest on merchandise (approximately 22% on items which include electronics, office supplies, books, newspapers, home improvement, shoes, clothes), the third largest on utilities (approx. 10.8% including water, gas and electricity bills, phone bills). Some of the smallest have been on self-care/recreation and education: 2.19% and 0.81% respectively (SEED, 2019 ).

The above numbers and their analysis suggest that the GI amount provided may have been enough to address the most immediate and pressing needs of the recipients, but not enough to allow for the additional benefits of well-being that have been discussed earlier in this paper, i.e., mental self-care, educational development, possible recreational activities, and creating a financial reserve to protect against future hardships. The SEED preliminary analysis report did demonstrate that there was a small, but significant difference in emotional health. Using the Kessler 10, an instrument that measures psychological distress run terms of anxiety and depression, the report concluded a small but statistically significant improvement in the mental health of the SEED recipients.

Semi structured interviews with the participants allowed for a greater amount of data and understanding, especially wit with to self-care and mental health. The authors of the report conducted qualitative interviews and these found that there were shifts in mental stress and an increase in self prioritization. Participants reported that the extra cash allowed then to focus non self and family, for instance writing poetry and buying ice-cream for their families, being able to buy birthday cakes (SEED, 2019 ). The analysis also found some “pooling behaviors”, which may have led to reduced anxiety, and greater self-care before the GI cash infusion. Participants reported difficulties in having enough cash for food and other necessities such as child care. They also reported not having enough to help out other family members (for example in case of an illness in the family) or any other needs that extended fancily may have. (West et al., 2021 ). With the GI cash they were able to engage in what the analysis report terms “pooling behaviors”, where participants reach out to help members of an extended network. As the analysis notes:

The $500 into their extended networks in aerial and immaterial ways that alleviated financial strain across fragile networks and generated more time for relationships … The 500 also assisted recipients with stretching resources across their networks to cover the needs of ill and aging family members, material needs such as school, or sports equipment, and transportation to and from doctor’s appointments they would otherwise skip. (West et al., 2021 )

The SEED website does mention a caveat to this data collection (SEED, 2019 ). The recipients transferred forty percent of the disbursed funds off the debit card, and as a result, the researchers were unable to track the spending data of those funds. The researchers explain these funds using data gathered from follow up interviews of the recipients. They determined four trends: that the recipients may not have believed in the project and so removed the money off the debit card as soon as they received it; that the lack of faith in past government trials may have caused recipients to not trust that the money would remain; that managing multiple cards may have been cumbersome and so the debit card funds were cashed; and those low-income neighborhoods have a mostly cash based culture. However, that such a sizable amount of disbursed funds cannot be tracked is a cause for concern, and future GI experiments may want to take note of such a state of affairs (Holder, 2021 ; SEED, 2019 ).

Policy and Political Implications of GI Experiments

One of the underlying expectations for GI experiments currently conducted across cities is to continue to bolster a narrative that a larger, more substantive guaranteed income project (maybe at the county or state level) would be an additional tool in the arsenal to end systemic and cyclical poverty. UBI’s potentially serve as a mechanism that alleviate persistent economic and social disadvantage in communities where such factors make it difficult for individuals that face economic hardship to climb out of poverty.

Past studies have demonstrated the efficacy of such an approach. Bermans’ ( 2018 ) study on the Alaska Permanent fund dividend demonstrated positive effects of poverty alleviation in low-income recipients (particularly seniors and children). Poverty rates decreased and Bermans’ ( 2018 ) study also found that the commonly regarded adverse effects of UBI, such as recipients being less motivated to work (reduction in potential labor force), buying temptation goods (alcohol, drugs and other items that would lead to family dissolution) or the cost of financing the UBI project. Other scholars have found similar trends in other UBI experiments, and also negative past arguments that providing a UBI does not adversely affect the labor supply market (Skoufias & Di Maro, 2008 ; Widerquist, 2005 ). Berman ( 2018 ) also references studies in developing nations, namely India, South Africa and Malawi where UBI for lower income populations have allowed for greater school attendance amongst youth, since youth are no depended upon for supplementing the household’s income (Case et al., 2003 ; Miller et al., 2006 ; Standing, 2013 ).

SEED’s preliminary analysis report released in March also pointed towards positive employment statistics: a 12% increase in employment of the SEED recipients in the first year, while the control group only had a 5% increase in employment. Such results are even more impressive considering the negative effect the pandemic had on employment in 2020. The results may indicate that participants were able to leverage the $500 monthly payments to improve employment prospects (West et al., 2021 ). The 7% comparative gain in employment from the participant base is noteworthy when n comparing the SEED recipient group results to the control group results. This increase has certain implications, especially for opponents of UBI schemes especially regarding the prohibitive “costs” of the UBI/GI to the taxpayer and the community at large. Opponents argue that a GI/UBI scheme would cost the taxpayer and the community more but the 7% increase in employment is a favorable statistic since it implies when recipients are assisted with a UBI/GI, they are in a better position to prospect for and gain employment. The extra cash infusion may allow for a freeing up of time, or reduced stressors associated with cost-of-living expenses so as to allow the recipient to have the ability to seek and maintain employment. Increased long term employment in the community implies a potential increase in taxable income, and more dollars infused into the community that can be spent towards goods and services, thereby making the recipient a more contributing member of society and not as much of a “burden” to the tax payer.

The issues that arise are project costs, and the temporary nature of the program. SEED was paid though by private donors (West et al., 2021 ). Now that the project has demonstrated benefits does that soften the soil for a city, county, or state to fund towards those programs? Past results on the cost efficiency of such programs are mixed, though the competing narratives seem to be colored by the political stances of those writing the narrative (Collier, 2020 ; Rector & Teixiera, 2018 ; Widerquist, 2018 ). Local government legislatures, especially those cities or counties in which such a program may be most needed may be ill-prepared to bear the cost ion such a program. This implies that in most cases. The most likely candidate would be state or federal tax increases, but the data on that seems mixed at best. Past proponents of a UBI/GI scheme have proposed eliminating all other means tested welfare programs, and to use this “cash out” to fund UBI (Murray, 2016a , b ). The issue with such a proposal is that some means tested programs such as Social Security and Medicare are incredibly popular in the US and just abandoning them in such a fashion would not be a policy narrative that could be easily supported. Other proponents have proposed additional taxation; Murray ( 2016a , b ) proposes a carbon tax, or just boosting taxes on higher income Americans. Again, while it is easier to propose taxation to solve such an issue, getting a tax averse culture to accept greater taxation has always been an issue in American politics. Glazer ( 2017 ) points out another, more troublesome matter, that UBI schemes may make matters worse for the poorest Americans. According to Glazer ( 2017 ) “ The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated that more than 42% of Americans are lifted out of poverty by food stamps, TANF, the earned income tax credit and Social Security. Replacing all or most of those safety net programs would plunge the poor deeper into poverty…” (Glazer, 2017 , p.61).

Opponents of the UBI scheme paint the issue as even more dire. They point to considerable tax increases, for example Glazer ( 2017 ) provides the example of Canada which has a child allowance UBI, and points out that the average Canadian Family now spends 42.5% of its income on federal, state (province), and local taxes, an increase of over 2000% since the 1960s. So, while support for such schemes remains high as long as someone else foots the bill, trying to fathom how government can sustain such UBI still remains an issue.

Conclusion and Implications for Social and Community Well Being

This policy review examined a guaranteed income ( GI) scheme named the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration SEED project. It discussed the benefits of the project and critically analyzed the results. It also provided a discourse on the benefits of a universal basic income (UBI) scheme as well as the challenges of universal implementation. While the review discerns the positive policy narratives that such projects create around the discussion of a UBI, it also provides an understanding of the inherent issues with taking the idea of a UBI further, i.e. transforming a UBI project from a limited endeavor in time and scope, to one that is sustainable, possibly at the local, or state level.

From a community and social wellbeing perspective, it can be assumed that the results are promising. They allude to a variety of mental, social, and community benefits recipients can avail if they are enrolled in such schemes. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD ( 2011 ) identify eleven dimensions that allow an individual to contribute to community well-being. Of the eleven the four dimensions that would most probably be affected positively by a guaranteed income would be income and wealth, access to housing, physical and mental health, and education and skills. Since income and wealth measure the economic resources available to an individual to satisfy needs and wants and to guard against future vulnerability, the data analysis of the SEED project demonstrated that this was accomplished. Participants were able to spend on essentials as well as some were able to save for a rainy day, and others even able to help vulnerable community members through pooling behaviors. The data also showed that the third largest percentage of monies allocated were towards costs such as utility bills, essentially demonstrating that the GI allowed for housing security thereby allowing recipients to have to worry less about their living conditions. Additionally, both quantitative and qualitative data analysis established an improvement in mental health. This paper has pointed out that there was a statistically significant improvement in the emotional health of the SEED participants. Qualitative interviews of the participants also indicated that the participants were able to spend time in recreation activities (for example writing poetry) or even sharing cherished moments with family (such as buying a birthday cake for a celebration). Consequently, it can be assumed that mental health did improve as a result of participation in the SEED program. Also, a small amount of the SEED funding was used towards self-recreation, and education and self-care (SEED, 2019 ).

The above implies that a UBI does have a positive impact on social and community well-being, i.e., that the recipients of seed experienced positive outcomes that resulted in a greater sense of well-being for them. The implications for community well-being are evident. A GI project that targets low-income groups by providing a small but significant cash infusion, without the requirement of a stringent means test would allow community members to benefit by having greater access to a guaranteed income source, more stable housing and living arrangements and a greater amount of self-care and better emotional health.

Declarations

The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.

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Junior International Consultant, Women’s Economic Empowerment, Research and Data

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UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence. UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.

A key area of concern for UN Women is women’s economic empowerment (WEE) as expressed in UN Women’s Strategic Plan 2022-2025 as well as in the targets and indicators of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 for gender equality and women’s empowerment and of several other SDGs relating to inclusive growth, decent work, ending poverty, and reducing inequality, and revitalizing the global partnership for sustainable development.  Aligned with the global SP (2022-2025), the ROAP SN (2023-2025) will focus on six SP cross-thematic outcomes to drive results across the ROAP’s thematic areas i.e., Inclusive governance, Ending Violence Against Women and Girls (EVAWG), Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE), Women Peace and Security (WPS), Climate Change, Humanitarian Action (HA) and DRR. It will also seek to enhance key areas of expertise in response to demand from country presences in the areas of economic planning, climate change and Knowledge Management (KM). Further, the ROAP’s thematic and functional activities will be geared towards effective and targeted support for country presences.  

The work of UN Women is based on a triple mandate: A normative mandate to support the formulation of global and regional standards and norms for gender equality; an operational mandate to support UN member states in implementing these standards; and finally, a mandate to coordinate the UN system’s efforts to deliver on its gender equality commitment. 

 The Women’s Economic Empowerment & Migration at the Regional Office for the Asia Pacific operates with the key overarching objective: Women have income security, decent work, and economic autonomy as articulated in the SN ROAP Women’s Economic Empowerment & Migration: 2023-2025.  The WEE portfolio is expanding focusing on the four key strategic priorities:   

• Advancing Gender-Responsive Business Conduct and Creating More Decent Work Opportunities (WEPs) 
• Transforming the Care Economy  
• Accelerating Gender-Responsive Entrepreneurship for (M)SMEs (i.e. Gender-Responsive Procurement, Women’s entrepreneurship etc.) 
• Progressing Safe Migration to Decent Employment  

These thematic areas are not operating in isolation and are strongly inter-connected and under-pinned by cross-cutting principles, such as: sector-agnostic work (across the Green & Blue -, care, fintech and digital economy); embracing an intersectional and conscious social norms lens into programming, and nexus to thematic areas such as Climate Change, Ending Violence Against Women, Humanitarian and Women Peace and Security (WPS). 

The increased importance of Women’s Economic Empowerment across the region and the numerous RO-led WEE initiatives has resulted in an increased demand for the Regional Office in Asia Pacific (ROAP) to expand and strengthen its work on its normative mandate, to ensure gender-responsive laws and policies for women’s economic empowerment in a manner that is closely aligned with WEE ROAP programmes and results frameworks. This includes a growing need for research and knowledge production for the region. The Junior Consultant will act as an important support in the production of knowledge products aimed at enhancing evidence-informed decision making in the relevant areas for WEE.

The objective of this consultancy is to provide specialized support in conducting gender analysis and supporting assessments pertaining to women’s economic empowerment in countries in Asia and the Pacific region. The consultant will focus on advancing gender equality and women's empowerment within the transforming care systems discourse by conducting context-specific assessments on gendered rooted causes of inequalities in the world of work, including identifying policy areas as critical domains of change where evidence-enhanced decision making can be enhanced.   Furthermore, the consultant's work will support the construction of a database for Asia and the Pacific for simulation of costing Sustainable Development Goals.

Under the supervision and guidance of Gender Statistics Specialist in the WEE Team, this consultant seeks to gain experience in internationally agreed indicators and national sources of relevant data women’s economic empowerment to conduct context-specific analysis to enhance evidence-informed decision making in the care economy and SDGs costing.

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Below is a list of a wider range of skillsets relevant to women’s economic empowerment research and data portfolio. We encourage applicants with relevant experience in any of the mentioned areas to apply. If you possess a subset of these skillsets, we would still be interested in considering your application.  

• Provide up-to-date information on policies and actions in Asia-Pacific aimed at recognizing, redistributing, and reducing unpaid care work as well as representing and rewarding paid care workers.
• Assist in conducting empirical analysis of relevant and timely gender indicators.
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Identify countries for gender analysis of transforming care systems based on criteria set up in close coordination with UN Women. Review data availability and conduct a desk review of relevant policies and action to transform care systems in select countries. Prepare a first draft template for country factsheet on WEE. Prepare a first draft of the dataset on public spending for SDG costing. 18 October 2024 Draft country factsheets as per agreed template and select countries. Refine the dataset on public spending with additional available data on public spending and select SDGs. Conduct desk review on WEE relevant topics for SDG costing  19 November 2024 Finalize country factsheets and database for SDG costing simulation. 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(A first-level university degree in similar fields in combination with two additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.) A minimum of 1 year of relevant progressively responsible experience in conducting empirical research from a gender lens, with a focus on advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment. Demonstrated experience working with gender data to advance evidence on persistent roots of gender inequality in the world of work, particularly within the Asia and Pacific region is required. Experience in leveraging gender data for enhancing evidence-informed decision making, especially in the context of monitoring commitments to gender-relevant framework through internationally agreed gender indicators is desirable. Having UN experience and international organization will be an advantage. Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of other language spoken in the Asia-Pacific region, or any UN official language is an asset. How to apply Interested candidates are encouraged to submit electronic application via the Jobs.UNDP.org platform. Submission package must include: Personal History Form (P11) which can be downloaded from UN-Women-P11-Personal-History-Form.doc (live.com) Cover letter explaining your interest in the consultancy and why you are the most suited candidate for this position. Kindly note that the system will only allow one attachment. Applications without the completed UN Women P-11 form will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment. Payments for this consultancy will be based on the achievement of each deliverable and certification that each has been satisfactorily completed. Payments will not be based on the number of days worked but on the completion of each stated deliverable within the indicated timeframes. UN Women Statement At UN Women, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment of mutual respect. UN Women recruits, employs, trains, compensates, and promotes regardless of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, ability, national origin, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, competence, integrity and organizational need.   If you need any reasonable accommodation to support your participation in the recruitment and selection process, please include this information in your application.   UN Women has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UN Women, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination.  All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to UN Women’s policies and procedures and the standards of conduct expected of UN Women personnel and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. (Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.)  350 COMMENTS Barriers and interventions on the way to empower women through ... The economic empowerment of women was explored in various dimensions at a much greater pace after 2000 (Priya et al., 2021). This inspired us to focus on the research work and other initiatives ... Women's political empowerment and economic growth We investigate whether and how women's political empowerment relates to technological change, the main driver of long-term economic growth. We argue that three aspects of empowerment - descriptive representation, civil liberties protection, and civil society participation - advance technological change and thereby economic growth through (a) increasing the number and variability of new ... (PDF) Women Empowerment: A Literature Review Email [email protected] [email protected]. Abstract. Women empowerment is a critical issue in today's world, as it aims to increase women's. economic, social, and political power. This ... Economic empowerment: A better life everyone can afford Economic empowerment rises with income, but only to a certain point. ... See Assessing the impact of the 2017 PPPs on the International Poverty Line and global poverty, policy research working paper number 9941, World Bank, 2022. PPP is meant to provide a common benchmark, but it has limitations in the context of this research. ... PDF Nber Working Paper Series Women'S Empowerment and Economic Development Women's Empowerment and Economic Development Esther Duflo NBER Working Paper No. 17702 December 2011, Revised January 2012 JEL No. D1,O1,O12 ABSTRACT 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 ... Women's Empowerment and Economic Development Published Versions. " Women's Empowerment and Economic Development ", Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 50, No. 4: 1051-79, December 2012. (also see NBER Working Paper No. 17702, 2011; CEPR Discussion Paper 8734, BREAD Policy Paper 29, 2011). citation courtesy of. Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan ... (PDF) Women's Economic Empowerment: An Integrative ... As new vistas emerge for furthering economic empowerment leading to inclusive growth, this paper provides a timely review and an integrative framework of existing research on women's economic ... Empowering Women Through Financial Inclusion: A Study of Urban Slum Economic empowerment is the capacity to contribute towards the growth processes in a way that recognizes the value of their contributions and makes a fair distribution of their wealth to ... Measuring financial inclusion. The Global Findex database (Policy Research Working Paper No. 6025). Washington, DC: The World Bank. Crossref. Google Scholar. What really empowers women? Taking another look at economic empowerment The paper examines the impact of economic empowerment on a woman's overall ability to take decision using data from the National Family Health Survey in India. Data on decision-making, economic empowerment and other socioeconomic variables of currently married women, aged 15-49 years, are used to analyse to whether and to what extent ... PDF Women's economic empowerment and inclusive growth: labour markets and 1. Introduction: gender, empowerment and inclusive growth This paper was commissioned by DFID and IDRC with a view to locating the growing concern with women's economic empowerment within its growth research programmes. Inclusive growth, as defined by IDRC, is growth which ensures opportunities for all sections of the population, with PDF Promoting Women's Economic Empowerment Produced by the Research Support Team. Abstract e Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the ndings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the ndings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. e papers carry the Women's Empowerment and Economic Development: A Feminist Critique of As Angus Deaton and Nancy Cartwright (Citation 2018a) observe, few research traditions have been so ardently defended on the grounds of being theory and assumption free.However, the usefulness of the empirical insights generated by randomista economics is limited by its failure to theorize change: "causal conclusions require causal assumptions about how causality might work or fail to work ... Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment: Feminist Mobilization for the The main argument of that paper was that progress towards gender equality and women's empowerment in the development agenda requires, first, a human rights-based approach consonant with the principles of indivisibility, interdependence and universality of rights, and second, support for the women's organizations and movements that can activate ... PDF Understanding and measuring womens economic empowerment 1. A definition of women's economic empow-erment; 2. A measurement framework that can guide the design, implementation and evaluation of programs to economically empower women; and. 3. A set of illustrative indicators that can serve as concrete examples for developing meaningful metrics for success. Brian Heilman/ICRW. Deciphering the crux of women's empowerment in agricultural value The paper concludes that the emergence of pro-WEAI offers a streamlined and improved tool for analyzing intrahousehold characteristics. It incorporates a gender parity index, enhancing the measurement process. This index is also utilized for calculating GDP per capita, providing a more accurate assessment of economic conditions. PDF Women s economic empowerment in sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from cross 3.2 Women's economic empowerment composite score. The extent of WEE in sub-Saharan Africa is low, but with considerable variation in the distribution. Out of a possible WEE score of 9, the average for all countries was 3.0. South Africa scored highest at 4.1, and Niger the lowest at 1.5 (Figure 2). Impact of microfinance on women's economic empowerment Women's economic empowerment a strategy aimed at enabling women in decision-making, increment in income and asset ownership. The main aim of the study is to examine the impact of microfinance on women's economic empowerment. Data were derived from a questionnaire of a sample of 346 women clients of microfinance. Multiple regression and paired sampled t-test data analysis techniques were ... Empowerment as one sees it: assessment of empowerment by women Methods. The study uses individual-level data obtained from the research project "What is Essential is Invisible: Empowerment and Security in Economic Projects for Low-Income Women in Four Mekong Countries (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam)", the main goal of which was to assess empowerment from development projects in Southeast Asia that had the explicit goal of empowering low-income women. Pursuing Women's Economic Empowerment Paper Prepared by Staff of the International Monetary Fund for the Meeting of G7 Ministers and Central Bank Governors, June 1-2, 2018, Whistler, Canada Pursuing Women's Economic Empowerment About Economic empowerment of rural and urban women in India: A ... The status of women is intimately connected with their economic situation depending upon the opportunity for participation in economic activities. The census data, 2011 shows a vast inequality between rural and urban women work participation as urban women associated with economic activities is just about half of the rural women. Available pieces of the literature revealed how the employment ... (PDF) Education's Role in Empowering Women and Promoting Gender J.C. Bose University of Science and Technology, YMCA, Faridabad, Haryana, India. This review paper critically examines the role of education in empowering women and promoting. gender inequality ... Exploring the role of microfinance in women's empowerment and In developing countries, women's empowerment is a major concern. Several efforts were made to tackle this issue as the aims of poverty reduction and development cannot be achieved without giving attention to women's empowerment. Over the past decades, microfinance institutions (MFIs) have appeared as crucial tools not only to address the issue of poverty but also particularly to empower women. PDF Empowering Women in India: Progress, Challenges, and Prospects in Assistant professor (Economics) Madan Mohan Malviya Post Graduate college Bhatpar Rani Deoria (274702) Abstract : Women's empowerment is a crucial aspect of societal development, promoting gender equality and fostering a fair and inclusive society. This research explores the status of women's empowerment across various states in PDF Empowering Women: Four Theories Tested on Four Different Aspects of This paper is organized into five parts. Part I offers a review of the literature on factors ... future research on women's empowerment and societal change. ... economic development, (2) the more recent human development view focusing on emancipative cultural changes that give rise to gender-egalitarian attitudes and self-expression values ... A Policy Review of the SEED (Stockton Economic Empowerment Introduction. This paper provides a policy review for the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration) (SEED) project.SEED is an acronym for Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, a guaranteed income project initiative that is a collaboration between the city of Stockton and two nonprofit organizations (Rector & Teixeira, 2018).According to the SEED website, the aim of the project is to ... Community Resilience Economic Decision Guide and Tool: Research The Economic Decision Guide walks communities through the steps to evaluate investments aimed at increasing a community's ability to adapt to, withstand, and recover from a disruptive event. Additionally, to aid communities in using the framework described by the Economic Decision Guide, a tool called the Economic Decision Guide Software (EDGe ... Dollars and Sense: Exposing Unfair Pricing* Economic Papers: A journal of applied economics and policy is an ESA journal publishing accessible and high-quality research in applied economics and economic policy analysis. This paper explores "price gouging" in oligopolistic industries. Drawing from Australian examples, it illustrates how determining who is responsible for market power ... (PDF) ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN IN INDIA Arjan de Haan, (2015), The Win-Win Case for Women's Economic Empowerment and Growth: Review of the Literature, Institute for the study of International development, GrOW Working Paper Series GWP ... Junior International Consultant, Women's Economic Empowerment, Research A key area of concern for UN Women is women's economic empowerment (WEE) as expressed in UN Women's Strategic Plan 2022-2025 as well as in the targets and indicators of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 for gender equality and women's empowerment and of several other SDGs relating to inclusive growth, decent work, ending poverty ... Application of the PAPERS Grading Criteria Within a Rapid Evidence PAPERS was a useful tool to determine the validity and reliability of different patient empowerment tools while also considering the practical aspects of implementation in clinical practice. However, further research requires the relevance of these tools in guiding behavior change across a diverse and complex population of healthcare service ... assignment essay homework phd report resume review speech thesis