Social Economic Empowerment
Women’s Economic Empowerment
Women’s Economic Empowerment
Women’s economic empowerment must not be examined in a vacuum. Widespread cultural and economic practices work to prevent empowerment.
To fully assess the opportunities and obstacles that exist, the intersection of political, social/cultural and environmental conditions must be analyzed alongside traditional economic indicators.
Factors impacting women’s economic empowerment include:
- Violence: women are the predominant victims of conflict, sexual violence, injury, death, intimidation and human trafficking
- Lack of adequate access to education, training and technology
- Lack of access to clean water, sanitation
- Lack of access to responsible health care/reproductive health
- Lack of access to credit/finance, safe work conditions, living/minimum wages
- Cultural practices, tradition, religious interpretations of women’s status
- Women’s lack of knowledge about rights and laws (economic, social, political, religious)
- Lack of adequate representation in decision-making positions and governance structures
Exploring the role of economic empowerment in HIV prevention
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It has been argued that women‘s economic vulnerability and dependence on men increases their vulnerability to HIV by constraining their ability to negotiate the conditions, including sexual abstinence, condom use and multiple partnerships, which shape their risk of infection.
In the face of escalating infection rates among women, and particularly young women, many have pointed to the potential importance of economic empowerment strategies for HIV prevention responses. Global evidence suggests that the relationship between poverty and HIV risk is complex, and that poverty on its own cannot be viewed simplistically as a driver of the HIV epidemic. Rather, its role appears to be multidimensional and to interact with a range of other factors, including mobility, social and economic inequalities and social capital, which converge in a particularly potent way for young women living in Uganda.
Uganda has a big youth population, majority of whom are poor, and are unemployed. Most of these youths have resorted to drug abuse causing high prevalence rate of mental illnesses. The female youths resort to prostitution as a quick way of earning money. The local authorities and the entire government have no welfare and strong rehabilitation systems to cater for the plight of these young people. It is only the police who are ever on the lookout for the jobless and loitering youths
COVID-19 ended a remarkable phase of global prosperity—a span of roughly 25 years when rapid economic growth enabled the incomes of the poorest nations to converge with those of the wealthiest, when the world came within striking distance of extinguishing extreme poverty.
Today, the world is massively off-track on the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030—the prerequisite for all other development objectives. Restoring progress will not be easy—but it can be done.
With this event, the World Bank aims to convene a broad set of voices to underscore the urgency of the poverty challenge and the limited ability developing countries have to offset shocks through fiscal policy. It will highlight the policies that can support inclusive growth based on the World Bank’s country experience and knowledge work.