everyone.1 Further report found that if African
smallholder women farmers had equal access to
land, labor, information, technology, fertilizer,
and water agricultural production across the
continent would increase by 20%.2
What to do to fix the problem? Seeing Women
and girls as engines of development
To give women control over the profits from
their labor seems to be the major step in order
to solve the problem. A necessary element of
that role is helping women and girls realize their
own power to advance the wellbeing of their
families, their communities, and their societies.
Researches show that women tend to invest
more of their earnings than men do in their
family’s well-being—as much as 10 times more.3
Also, the research in this area identifies some
key elements of empowerment, including
education, control over resources, decisionmaking authority, and physical safety. Girls’
access to education, the most studied variable,
is especially powerful. Each extra year of
education is associated with a 10 to 20%
increase in income.4 5
Results Examples
There are strong associations between women’s
empowerment and specific health and
development outcomes. For example, women’s
control over resources is associated with better
outcomes in family planning; maternal,
newborn, and child health; nutrition; and
agricultural development.6 Another example, a
recent review of a CARE program in Bangladesh
shows that health and nutrition programs were
substantially more effective at reducing stunting
in children when households also participated in
activities that contributed to women’s
empowerment.7”(Gates, 2014)
4
For more information, please have a look: E. Duflo,
“Women’s empowerment and economic
development,” working paper 17702 (National
Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA,
2011); available at www.nber.org/papers/w17702.
5
For more information, please have a look: Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, The
State of Food and Agriculture 2010-2011: Women in
Agriculture: Closing the Gender Gap for
Development. (FAO, Rome, 2011); available at
www.fao.org/docrep/013/i2050e/ i2050e00.htm.
For more information, please have a look: R. Levine,
Center for Global Development, Girls Count: A Global
Investment & Action Agenda (Center for Global
Development, Washington, DC, 2009); available at
www.coalitionforadolescentgirls.org/sites/default/fil
es/ Girls_Count_2009.pdf.
6
For more information, please have a look: M.
O’Sullivan, A. Rao, R. Banerjee, K. Gulati, M. Vinez,
“Levelling the Field: Improving Opportunities for
Women Farmers in Africa,” working paper 86039
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014); available at
http://documents.
worldbank.org/curated/en/2014/01/19243625/levell
ing-fieldimproving-opportunities-women-farmersafrica.
3
7
1
For more information, please have a look: World
Bank, World Development Report 2012: Gender
Equality and Development (World Bank, Washington,
DC, 2011);
http://elibrary.worldbank.org/doi/book/10.1596/
978-0-8213-8810-5.
2
For more information, please have a look: D.
Thomas, in Intrahousehold Resource Allocation in
Developing Countries: Models, Methods and Policy,
L. Haddad, J. Hoddinott, H. Alderman, Eds. (Johns
Hopkins Univ. Press, Baltimore, MD, 1997), pp. 142–
164.
For more information, please have a look: M. R.
Shroff et al., Soc. Sci. Med. 73, 447–455 (2011). 14. L.
C. Smith, F. Kahn, T. R. Frankenberger, A. Wadud,
Admissible Evidence in the Court of Development
Evaluation? The Impact of Care’s Shouhardo Project
23