Unearthing Underlying Constraining Factors to Women’s Economic Empowerment

A Case for Feminist Political Economy Analysis

Abstract

This paper discusses feminist political economy analysis (PEA) as a core tool for contextual analysis in relation to women’s economic empowerment. Feminist PEA assesses the formal and underlying informal factors that impact women’s performance in social, economic and political spheres, and how these might affect their economic empowerment. The paper also explores selected literature on women’s incomes, livelihoods and labour participation so as to illustrate feminist concerns in normative practices, including cultural prescriptions, on the economic, political and social order; male domination over the economic and labour markets; and power relations in the production value chains such as the agricultural, dairy and energy value chains. Through an exploration of feminist issues and underlying factors that constrain the performance of market institutions the paper finds that often invisible factors, such as care work and domestic labour, significantly affect women’s participation in economic activities and income generation. The feminist PEA is clearly an effective tool for unearthing how women’s effectiveness as agents of economic change in the market is constrained by a myriad of informal underlying factors. The paper finds that feminist PEA richly provides a deeper perspective on contextual issues related to women’s economic empowerment, and recommends a more deliberate implementation of policies and laws in order to minimize the negative impacts of the underlying factors that stymie women’s economic empowerment. Of importance is the need for any policy reform aimed at enhancing women’s economic empowerment to factor in measures for addressing unpaid reproductive labour, and a supportive environment to enable women’s participation in entrepreneurship and the labour market.