Women’s Economic Empowerment
Solutions for Measuring Economic Empowerment
Economic empowerment is multidimensional; measuring it, or even facets of it, is challenging. Improving the measurement of women’s economic empowerment (WEE), by bringing clarity, quality, and comparability to existing and emerging measures, is a significant step in understanding and ultimately improving women’s economic opportunities. Data2X has contributed by surveying the landscape of WEE measures and women’s financial inclusion indicators; convening experts from the WEE measurement community to improve the quality of measurement; and diving deep on the measurement of women’s work to ensure women’s contributions to the economy are accurately and fully captured in labor force statistics.
Working in close partnership with stakeholders in both the private and public sectors, Data2X has identified key types of solutions for measuring economic empowerment:
Solutions for Assessing Existing Measures:
This includes tools which clarify what economic empowerment measures exist, their limits, and provide guidance on understanding and selecting the right tools. To assist with this, Data2X and the Center for Global Development launched Measuring Women’s Economic Empowerment: A Compendium of Selected Tools, a comprehensive report which provides guidance on available population monitoring tools and monitoring and evaluation frameworks. Similarly, with respect to women’s financial inclusion data specifically, the Women’s Financial Inclusion Data Partnership has released the Women’s Financial Inclusion Data Dictionary to advance harmonization efforts by accelerating understanding of indicators as a first step to increasing data compatibility.
Solutions for Improving Coordination and Collaboration:
The WEE Measurement Learning Collaborative, launched in May 2021 by the Center for Global Development and Data2X, convenes women’s economic empowerment experts across sectors to improve the quality and relevance of measurement tools and indicators and to advance understanding and informed use of WEE-related measures for research and action.
Solutions for Improving the Quality of Measures:
These solutions seek to improve measures of women’s economic empowerment by refining their methodology. For example, the WEE Measurement Learning Collaborative has released transparency guidelines for indexes. Similarly, the International Labor Organization, the World Bank, and Data2X collaborated to improve measures of women’s paid and unpaid activities.
Women remain both unserved and underserved compared to men in all segments of the financial market, from bottom-of-the-pyramid to high-net-worth.
FOCUS ON WOMEN’S FINANCIAL INCLUSION DATA
There is a persistent global gender gap in financial inclusion. Women worldwide are less likely than men to have bank accounts and access to credit and loans. Women remain both unserved and underserved compared to men in all segments of the financial market, from bottom-of-the-pyramid to high-net-worth. A critical dimension of women’s economic empowerment is therefore leveraging the power of women’s financial inclusion data. Toward this end, Data2X coordinates The Women’s Financial Inclusion Data Partnership, a collaboration of international development agencies to improve the availability and usage of gender data from financial institutions. Under the partnership, Data2X and the Financial Alliance for Women are undertaking pilot projects in six countries aimed at improving supply-side gender data to increase women’s financial inclusion. Diagnostic work in the six countries has resulted in areas for priority action on data and lessons learned. More details on this work, including a financial inclusion gender data playbook, are forthcoming.