Measuring Women’s Sense of Control and Efficacy
Increasing women’s sense of control over their lives is key to reducing gender inequalities and improving development outcomes. Research suggests women tend to believe less in their abilities to act effectively towards their goals and they provide more importance than men to external factors determining their life events. Understanding the degree to which women perceive control over their lives is critical for designing and adapting policies to change limiting local norms. Social expectations about women’s unpaid care roles impose severe constraints on women’s well-being and livelihoods and are, thus, integrally linked to women’s agency. Yet, this linkage is not well defined in recent measures of women’s empowerment, which tend to incorporate time use only in terms of time poverty or having an excessive workload. This brief summarizes existing knowledge gaps in the three key measurement areas and lays out how the measures for advancing gender equality (MAGNET) initiative plans to tackle them.
Main Author: | |
---|---|
Format: | Brief biblioteca |
Language: | English |
Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2021-08
|
Subjects: | GENDER INNOVATION LAB, AFRICA GENDER POLICY, WOMEN AND PRIVATE SECTOR DEVELOPMENT, WOMEN AND PROPERTY RIGHTS, WOMEN AND YOUTH EMPLOYMENT, WOMEN AND SOCIAL NORMS, WOMEN AND AGRICULTURE, GENDER INEQUALITY, MAGNET, WOMEN'S AGENCY, |
Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/undefined/904181631077189671/Measuring-Women-s-Sense-of-Control-and-Efficacy http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36273 |
Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
Summary: | Increasing women’s sense of control over
their lives is key to reducing gender inequalities and
improving development outcomes. Research suggests women tend
to believe less in their abilities to act effectively
towards their goals and they provide more importance than
men to external factors determining their life events.
Understanding the degree to which women perceive control
over their lives is critical for designing and adapting
policies to change limiting local norms. Social expectations
about women’s unpaid care roles impose severe constraints on
women’s well-being and livelihoods and are, thus, integrally
linked to women’s agency. Yet, this linkage is not well
defined in recent measures of women’s empowerment, which
tend to incorporate time use only in terms of time poverty
or having an excessive workload. This brief summarizes
existing knowledge gaps in the three key measurement areas
and lays out how the measures for advancing gender equality
(MAGNET) initiative plans to tackle them. |
---|