Unpacking Women's Empowerment: Preliminary Program

 

“Unpacking Women’s Empowerment: Implications for Research, Policy and Practice in International Development”


2018 Annual Conference

Institute for the Study of International Development

McGill University

March 15-16 2018, Faculty Club, 3450 McTavish


Since the 1970s governments and various civil society actors at international and domestic levels have engaged in legal, political, economic and social efforts to advance diverse visions of women’s empowerment. Yet, more work needs to be done to clarify what constitutes women’s empowerment in contemporary circumstances, and how to evaluate various policies or practices in terms of their impact on promoting various forms of women’s empowerment. These tasks are complicated by the diversity of development contexts, as well as the multidimensional nature of factors affecting women’s empowerment. They are also especially policy relevant given Canada’s new Feminist International Assistance Policy aimed at promoting gender equality in aid programming.

ISID’s annual conference on March 15-16, 2018 presents a valuable opportunity to “unpack” the agenda of women’s empowerment in global development, with an interdisciplinary group of experts who will discuss contemporary challenges and opportunities for research, policy and practice, as well as examine some of the recent evidence on empowerment initiatives in resource-poor settings. The conference will focus on various challenges that confront scholars and policy makers seeking to construct policies and assess their impact on increasing women’s autonomy, voice, and/or well-being in the household, civil society, and national politics. Some of these challenges include the difficulties associated with how to measure and benchmark progress toward achieving women’s empowerment in diverse development contexts, as well as concerns that the design and implementation of women’s empowerment policies obscure their politically contested nature. Other challenges have to do with how to incorporate evidence of social and political backlash in assessing the impact and success of various policies.

This conference will also highlight ISID’s current partnership with Canada’s International Development Research Center (IDRC), to disseminate the results of their $17.5 million women’s economic empowerment program, GrOW, taking place in over 50 countries around the world. We must take advantage of this opportune moment in Canadian politics to unpack the concept of women’s empowerment and move the national and international agenda forward.