DISTRIBUCIÓN EN PLANTA

Not only is women’s empowerment a multidimensional phenomenon, but also the factors affecting it as well as the process of empowerment are complex to understand. In this section, we discuss the factors that may have an influence on women’s empowerment.

Among the factors that influence women’s empowerment, education is thought of first and foremost because it is seen as an agent to expand women’s knowledge and skills (Jayaweera, 1997). Also education is considered to improve women’s ability to resist subjugation (Hogan, Berhanu, & Hailemariam, 1999) and it increases women’s capacity to deal with the outside world (Kabeer, 2005). One of the crucial roles that education plays in human capital development is that it enhances one’s potential for employment and income. By providing women with the necessary and adequate knowledge and skills, education paves the way for overcoming the barriers towards materialising their economic potential.

Employment and equal opportunities for employment are crucial for women’s empowerment. When women work for pay outside their husband’s farm or outside the home, then their socioeconomic status within the household and society tends to improve because their earning supplements household resources. When women earn, societies and households begin to recognise women’s economic contribution and thereby women achieve respect and command. Also employment reduces women’s economic dependence on men. In this way, participation in the labour market and earnings are crucial in influencing women’s empowerment. It has been found in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal that women who are working and earning are more likely to have a voice and perhaps have a strong say in household decision-making than women who do not work and earn (Senarath & Gunawardena, 2009). More importantly, formal employment or semi-formal employment that provides women with earnings at regular intervals influences their agency, voice, and relationship within the household (Kabeer, Mahmud, & Tasneem, 2011). Women who are engaged in this type of employment tend to have some control over their income and investment decisions. When women work in different sectors, it builds confidence among other women as well as among employers and thus broadens employment opportunities for other women. Many people tend to approach the women who are engaged in formal jobs for opinions and information, which also amplifies the social value of women.

Access to and control over resources are not only one of the constituents of the process of empowerment but also a lack of them seriously affects women’s well-being, socioeconomic status, and empowerment (Agarwal, 1994b). The most important resource for agricultural households is arable land, in which usually women have little or no control, especially in South Asia (ibid). Women generally lack the right to hold property, owing to religious and cultural practices. A prime example is the law of inheritance which legalises discriminatory right to inherit property for women (Agarwal, 1994a). As social norms further limit women’s work in the agricultural fields, women lose their direct access to land. Moreover, legal property rights are also found to be discriminatory against women. There is evidence in Bangladesh that even if women own land, men (her husband or elder son) mainly controls its operation and that women often forgo their share of inheritance for their brothers (Cain et al., 1979). In the events of widowhood, abandonment or divorce, it is generally women who form the deprived group in relation to assets. All these factors lead to the women’s lack of ownership of properties. As a result, they generally have too little or no power to participate in decision-making concerning the use of resources. By contrast, there is evidence in the literature that women who own land are more likely to have the final say on household decisions in Nepal (Allendorf, 2007).

Access to financial resources can also be vital for women’s empowerment because it can potentially eliminate the effect of other limiting factors. It may help women to break the vicious circle of poverty and thereby can lift them from a poverty trap. In particular, access to credit may facilitate women to cope with the deprivation of land resources, property inheritance, and employment. However since women generally lack resources and constitute the most disadvantaged group in the poor rural areas, they often remain outside the reach of collateral loans. For poor rural women, a lack of skills combined with inaccessibility to credit limits their livelihood options. Micro-credit, which is a particular intervention mainly implemented by various NGOs to make credit available to resource-poor rural women, found to have a positive influence on women’s socioeconomic status and empowerment. Numerous studies have documented such evidence of the significant effect of microcredit on women’s empowerment (R. Amin, Becker, & Bayes, 1998; Chowdhury & Chowdhury, 2011; N. Islam, Ahmed, Chew, & Netto, 2012; Pitt et al., 2006; M. M. Rahman et al., 2014; Schuler, Hashemi, Riley, & Akhter, 1996). Micro-credit programmes require the participant women to meet in peer groups meeting usually on weekly basis, which enables women to establish control over their mobility. Apart from this, micro-credit acts as an additional income source

for women and thus reduces women’s socioeconomic dependence on their husband. Women’s participation in group-based micro-credit programmes exposes them to new ideas, values, and social support, which eventually leads to greater assertiveness. They become aware of their legal rights and about the source of potential legal support in case of any conflict or violence. All these provide women with control over material resources, thus they secure increased domestic prestige and importance in the eyes of their husbands who then seek wife’s consultation in household matters (R. Amin et al., 1998).

Institutions—both formal and informal—have a considerable effect on women’s empowerment (World Bank, 2012). Examples would be when law and regulations segregate men and women in ownership rights, prohibition of women’s work in some sectors, or restrictions on hours of work. Institutions tend to reflect those who wield more power and influence, which are difficult to change. Thus institutions can constrain women’s agency and opportunities more than those of men.

Along with institutions social norms shape women’s empowerment (ibid). Social perceptions and attitudes towards women may determine the endowments and opportunities that women have and thus can negatively influence women’s empowerment. When women do not work outside the home, their daughters are also less likely to work as adults, and their sons are less likely to marry women who work outside the home. In this way, discriminatory attitudes may be propagated across generations, which may reproduce over time through social norms. In sum, women’s empowerment is likely to be influenced not only by a single factor instead a wide variety of factors may have an effect. Education, employment opportunities, access to and control over productive resources, access to credit, institutional constraints, and social norms all may have an important bearing on empowerment.