Poverty Alleviation through Women Empowerment

By empowering women to participate in growth opportunities, developing countries will

accelerate their economic and social development. Working women invest 90 percent of their
earnings back to their families, leading to greater health and education for their children.
This, in turn, creates a cycle that sustainably alleviates poverty.

Educational Opportunities for Women’s Empowerment in Developing Countries

Empowerment aims to move persons from oppressed powerlessness to positions of power.
Education is a vital component in empowering women in developing countries. Through the
provision of confidence, knowledge and skills, women can rebuild impoverished
communities. Increasing women’s and girls’ educational attainment contributes to
women’s economic empowerment and more inclusive economic growth. Education,
upskilling and re-skilling over the life course – especially to keep pace with rapid
technological and digital transformations affecting jobs—are critical for women’s and girl’s
health and wellbeing, as well as their income-generation opportunities and participation in the
formal labour market.

Economic Opportunities for Women’s Empowerment in Developing Countries

One of the most important ways to promote peace and stability is to provide economic
opportunities to empower women. Through economic partnerships between public and
private sectors that enable women to be part of a nation’s growing economy, research has
shown a ripple effect against poverty that will extend across families and societies.

When more women work, economies grow. Women’s economic empowerment boosts
productivity , increases economic diversification and income equality in addition to other
positive development outcomes. Women’s economic equality is good for business.
Companies greatly benefit from increasing employment and leadership opportunities for
women, which is shown to increase organizational effectiveness and growth. It is estimated
that companies with three or more women in senior management functions score higher in all
dimensions of organizational performance.

Giving women greater economic empowerment means enabling women to increase their right
to economic resources and their control over meaningful decisions that benefit themselves,
their households and their communities. These include the right to control their own time,
their income and access to participation in existing markets equally. Greater empowerment
improves their well-being and economic status.
Empowering more women to work, results in better growth of third-world economies. This is
because women’s economic empowerment, increases economic diversification, boosts
productivity and income equality, resulting in other positive development outcomes. As a
study from the IMF shows, policies that improve access to educational opportunities and
finance for women can contribute to a reduction in inequality and an increase in economic
growth for the developing country. Providing women and girls with more educational
opportunities contributes to: "reductions in fertility rates and increases in labour force
participation rates, and in which thereby better quality of human capital of the future
economy and generations.
Girls in this region are often prevented from attending school due to poverty and work
demands at home, this is then further aggravated by higher rates of child marriage amongst
girls in this situation . However, poverty decreases when more women and girls are
educated . women also benefit their families and communities as they are often more likely to
spend money on things that support their children, the household. This then improves the
chances of their family to achieve health and prosperity .Giving girls equal access to
education and opportunities, enables them to eventually grow into educated, resilient women
able to take on leadership roles in their countries, resulting in significant positive
developmental outcomes for that country. This in turn helps to speed up the reduction in
gender inequality, as having more women in leadership roles, means they develop policies
that will increase support for women and girls.
Women are crucial to the economic development of countries. By empowering women
through policies such as greater access to educational opportunities and finance, this results in
better economic development for everyone as women with economic resources and control
over meaningful decisions tend not only to benefit themselves but also their households and
communities.
Women’s equality is vital to increasing sustainable economic growth in developing countries,
in order to empower more women and girls, there needs to be better access to education,
health and opportunities in the labour market.

Health: Educated women have greater knowledge about health, which develops her ability to
focus on the health of her children7. The
bargaining power of educated women particularly with respect to family health and nutrition
is on a higher side as compared to their spouses.
Education and educational freedom: Education empowers women to achieve more in their
social, career, economic and family lives. It is believed that men and women have a similar
distribution of innate abilities. Gender inequality in education leads to less opportunities
getting provided to no less able (than men) women. This may lower the productivity of the
human capital in the economy and thus lower economic growth.
As female education is believed to promote the quantity and quality of education of their
children (through the support and general
environment educated mothers can provide their children), this positive externality is likely to
exist.

Policies-
Gender differences in laws affect both developing and developed economies, and women
in all regions.
Globally, over 2.7 billion women are legally restricted from having the same choice of jobs
as men. Of 189 economies assessed in 2018, 104 economies still have laws preventing
women from working in specific jobs, 59 economies have no laws on sexual harassment in
the workplace, and in 18 economies, husbands can legally prevent their wives from working.

Women remain less likely to participate in the labour market than men around the
world. Labour force participation rate for women aged 25-54 is 63 per cent compared to 94
per cent for men. When including younger (aged 15 years and up) and older women (aged 55
and up) , in 2018 women’s global labour force participation rate is event lower at 48.5 per
cent, 26.5 percentage points below that of men.

Women are more likely to be unemployed than men. In 2017, global unemployment rates
for men and women stood at 5.5 per cent and 6.2 per cent respectively. This is projected to
remain relatively
unchanged going into 2018 and through 2021.
Women are over-represented in informal and vulnerable employment. Women are more
than twice as
likely than men to be contributing family workers. From the latest available data, the share of
women
in informal employment in developing countries was 4.6 percentage points higher than that of
men, when
including agricultural workers, and 7.8 percentage points higher when excluding them.

Globally, women are paid less than men. The gender wage gap is estimated to be 23 per
cent. This means that women earn 77 per cent of what men earn, though these figures
understate the real extent of gender pay gaps, particularly in developing countries where
informal self-employment is prevalent. Women also face the motherhood wage penalty,
which increases as the number of children a woman has increases.

Women bear disproportionate responsibility for unpaid care and domestic work.
Women tend to spend around 2.5 times more time on unpaid care and domestic work than
men.

Women are still less likely to have access to social protection. Gender inequalities in
employment and job quality result in gender gaps in access to social protection acquired
through employment, such as pensions, unemployment benefits or maternity protection.
Globally, an estimated nearly 40 per cent of women in wage employment do not have access
to social protection.
Women are less likely than men to have access to financial institutions or have a bank
account.
Women are constrained from achieving the highest leadership positions

Source: Facts and Figures: Economic Empowerment | UN Women – Headquarters

Recommendations

Empowering women and making full use of their labour force for economic growth.

•
Educating and maintaining the health of women to enhance productivity and social
development.

•
Empowering women and providing them with fair representation across different
decision-making levels of the government structure to better protect women's interests
and to achieve quality governance.

•
Protecting the rights of women to make them active participants in the economic,
social, political, cultural, and other arenas of the country, thereby bringing about
development.

•
Protecting the environment to bring about sustainable development, as the
environment is the key source of the country's economy. Empowering women to play
an equal role in the protection and management of the environment, with their special
knowledge and expertise, is also essential.