Women’s empowerment has long been a focus of major development institutions, such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development have identified gender equality and women’s empowerment among its top six priorities for promoting and sustaining human well-being. In the broadest sense, women’s empowerment is understood through the expansion of women’s freedom of choice and action through increased control over resources and agency in decisions to shape their own lives. As a means to many ends, women’s empowerment is considered to be of instrumental importance given its significant and positive contribution to a wider range of development outcomes, including human capital attainment (health and education), self-efficacy, political and legal participation, and poverty reduction, among others. However, in spite of the central role that women’s empowerment plays in the global agenda, the international development community has continued to struggle with operationalizing, measuring, and evaluating the concept.

While women and girls have made considerable social, political, and economic advances in recent decades, progress has been slow, and women continue to remain marginalized in their homes and communities. Current global estimates find that 15 million primary school-aged girls are out of school compared to 10 million boys. Women only hold one out of every four parliamentary seats, and only 52 percent of women who are married or in a union make their own choices over contraceptive use and health care. With less access to property, economic markets, education, health care, credit, and other assets, women are more likely to be dependent on public sector support to meet their needs and are less resilient to adverse shocks, including climate change, putting both them and their families at greater risk of poverty and insecurity.