Women Empowerment And Economic Development

However, the contributions of women to the economy have gone unrecognized and unvalued. Also, there is unequal opportunities between men and women in the workforce, which means that women do not receive an opportunity at demonstrating their ability to lift themselves from poverty and similar issues, and their options to improve their lives are limited or nonexistent. However, I feel that what men do not realize when oppressing women is that women make up half of the world's population. This ultimately means that women also make up half the workforce. A nation that limits women and discriminates against them cannot reach it's full potential or productiveness. On the other hand, if a country's government, businesses, and overall, the communities invest in women, developing countries are less likely to be striken by poverty. Women are educated to wisely manage the money that they earn, which results in less poverty because they will know how to save and spend her money properly. To add on, economic empowered women raise healthier and better educated children, which results in children that will continue to manage money wisely, with their mother's guidance, and ultimately this would lead to a decrease in poverty. Economic empowerment means not only reducing

The economy over many centuries have changed and developed in a variety of ways. One of the most influential economic systems that had developed between the 1700’s and the 1900s is capitalism. Capitalism is an economic system that is controlled by individuals, rather than the government, and requires the working class to use all its resources in order for the capitalist class to retain a profit. One question that still remains is this; how do women’s rights compare to capitalism? There are many theoretical concepts that have helped shape capitalism throughout history. Women’s rights are the rights given to women to express equality when being compared to a man. In the year that capitalism was developed, patriarchy played a dominant role regarding home life and the workplace, which motivated women to take action. Women’s rights are significant in the development of capitalism because it protested the male dominant atmosphere to create opportunity for women to take part as working class and to obtain equal status with a man in regards to everyday living. This resulting in a dramatic change in our economic system. Gender inequalities during the 18th and 20th centuries had a mass contribution to how capitalism developed.

Women and poverty is one of the critical areas of concern from the Beijing Platform for Action. Unfortunately there is over 1 billion of who are women that are living in poverty. Most of the women who are living in poverty and in very poor condition are from developing countries, but we also have this problem here in the United States. Poverty has been a factor of little to no education, single mother raising their families, little resources, and pay gap. In the article of Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, Fourth World Conference on Women, one of the strategic objectives is, to analyze from a gender perspective, policies and programmers including those related to macroeconomic stability, structural adjustment, external debt problems,

Adopting pragmatic policy actions to promote more economic participation by women is not only critical to prosperity at long-run but can significantly contribute to the economic growth of the state. The potential gains by the United States which is the largest among the economically advanced countries can be replicated at the state level. On the contrary, expert opinions are of the view that the declining proportion of the active labor force due to demographic transition and slowing technological progress could cause the growth trajectory of the GDP to decelerate. Harnessing the potentials of gender equality will significantly stabilize the GDP growth over the coming decade.

In 2006, the Organization for economic cooperation and development database conducted a survey on the economic and political power of women in 162 countries, and it was concluded that the greater the power of women, the greater the country's economic success. Out of the 162 countries, 100 countries have started forcing women into power in an effort to improve there countries fortunes and government. This shows how women are greatly impacting the society,making the right choices and government

Restricting the participation of women in public and economic life limits economic development and national potential. Empowering women and providing opportunities for their full integration into all aspects of society is not just an issue of justice for women but also a vital factor in creating a climate positive to achieving sustainable progress and development.

"Women do two thirds of the world’s work...Yet they earn only one tenth of the world’s income and own less than one percent of the world’s property. They are among the poorest of the world’s poor." –Barber B. Conable Jr, President, World Bank

According to the World Bank, women make up 70% of the world’s poor and their wages world wide are on average 50% to 80% of men’s. One third of all households word wide are headed by women, they are responsible for half the world’s food production, and yet they own just one per cent of the world’s property. The majority of workers in sweatshops are women and the majority of unpaid labour is done by women in every region of the world. Further, women make up two-thirds of the one billion people who are illiterate and 60% of the 100 million who have no access to primary education.

Poverty has increasingly become a noticeable issue worldwide over the past couple of decades. With the middle class steadily decreasing, considerable amounts of people are becoming part of the lower class, and even more of our world’s population are beginning to live in poverty. It is important to understand there are different definitions of poverty, and that is largely determined by what each country’s government determines as the cut off of poverty, otherwise known as the ‘poverty line’. Although some people could live above the poverty line, and still be struggling financially, it goes unrecognized by most research collection. However, what was initially noticed around the 1970’s is that there was a significant rise in women’s poverty statistics. More female-headed households were living in poverty, and a majority of those women belonged to a minority. This recognizable trend has been deemed the ‘feminization of poverty’, which according research is not only a growing problem in North America, but several other countries around the world. Information gathered about this issue in the United States shows that female-headed households is by far the fastest growing type of family structure, and due to the fact there is a growing poverty level amongst this group, it now means that approximately half of the all the poor in the United States live in a women-headed family and household. (Gimenez, 1999, p. 336) The biggest question when is comes to this particular topic is why?

Women and men have had certain roles in society that were understood amongst them to be specified for their particular gender. Males were known to have the leading role as head of the house hold and the bread winner while the woman’s duty was to stay at home and take care of the house and children. While many people years ago deemed this way of life and practice to be the right and ethical thing to do, times have changed and so this kind of treatment towards a woman’s equality must be questioned. Even though times have changed, this mindset of a woman’s ability to be as good as a man has not completely gone away. In today’s society a woman contributes to the economy and her family as equally as that of a man. Therefore, women should share equal rights and opportunities as their gender counterparts.

In many developing countries globalization has brought masses of wealth to the elite at the expense of the poor. Consequently, many women of the poorer classes leave their homeland in search of opportunities for employment. These women are disproportionately affected by

Throughout the history of mankind, the rank of women has been extremely pivotal in the development of the humans. At present, the progress of the nation is determined by the high positions of the women in the society in terms of the employment and the work. It is said that without the contribution of the women in the political, business, social, economic and national activities, the growth of the country will stagnate. Although in the past, the women were more accustomed to working in homes and taking care of children, etc. but now they are stepping into the outside world due to advances in education for women and increasing awareness.

The purpose of the paper is to review the article, “Fixing women or fixing the world? “Smart economics’, efficiency approaches, and gender equality in development” by Sylvia Chant & Caroline Sweetman. This article primarily focuses on ‘Smart economics’, referring to an investment in women for encouraging economic growth and providing impetus to women’s empowerment and gender equality.

It is general belief in our society that role of women is restricted in four walls of home or for mainly household activities. Economy of any country can’t boom without contributing women. The growing industrialization, urbanization and social legislation and with the spread of education and awareness women have shifted from kitchen to higher level of professional activities. Today’s women are taking more and more professional and technical degrees to cope up with market need.The position of women and their position is any society is an index of its civilization. Women are to be considered as equal partner in the process of development.

Baserup (1970) suggested that women needed to reduce the work loads they had so that they take part in education, projects which will also extend their power in the economy. In addition, Baserup pointed out that women have to receive credit facilities for greater economic projects. For example, Baserup echoed the mechanization of “female farming’ in African women farmers and revolutionarize traditional forms of agriculture for productive efficiency extracted from Schech and Haggis (2000). Rogers (1980) also suggested for a complete overhand of male attitudes against women. Rogers explicitly challenged this in her survey of the FAO institutional arrangement. She concluded that no women were found in field officers in technical division. Rogers (1980) therefore, concluded that women were not only excluded from planning and decision making but were being ignored and overlooked. Furthermore, households were assumed to be male headed which also generalized women as housewives (Rogers 1980:66 in Schech and Haggis, 2000). This shows that women’s work was regarded as non- work due to male bias. However, the WID approach agitated for equity, empowerment, efficiency and equal participation of women in existing structures.