Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) is a concept being heard more and more in development circles, but what does it mean exactly? Fair & Sustainable together with AgriProFocus made an infographic to visualize this important and often used concept. The infographic is based on publications of the Donor Committee for Enterprise Development (DCED), and work done together with FAO for the development of their guiding framework for gender sensitive value chain development.
A woman is economically empowered when she has both (1) the ability to succeed and advance economically and (2) the power to make and acts on her own economic decisions at individual, household, and community level, and controls resources, profits, and decision-making processes. Not all women will follow the same path to become economically empowered. Important is that all women become empowered by the knowledge, tools, and power to make decisions for themselves.
This sounds interesting, but also quite theoretical. By means of simple icons this infographic visualizes the two sides of WEE: Tools to Act (Access to productive resources) and Power to Act (Power and Agency). On the reverse of the infographic, these icons are used to analyze the constraints and strategies to address them in different situations along the value chain.
Download infographic in pdf English version and French version.
Credits/ further reading:
FAO. 2016. Developing gender-sensitive value chains – A guiding framework. Rome
DCED, 2014. Measuring Women’s Economic Empowerment in Private Sector Development Guidelines for Practitioners, by Erin Market, updated September 2016
