1. Gender Equality and Women’s empowerment
Ranjani K Murthy and Kanchan Lhama, 2016
COE Workshop “Assessment of effectiveness of equity-based evaluation methodologies and tools to measure impacts on gender equality and empowerment of women” 18-19th June, 2016

2. Gender Equality (Kapur, 1993, Facio 2009)
Formal
Substantive

3. Formal equality
The concept of formal gender equality is premised on the principle of the sameness of women and men, and assumes that if women and men are given the same opportunity and are treated similarly as men, equality will be achieved. It does not take into account the power relations between men and women or biological differences between women and men which need to be taken into account

4. Substantive Equality
The substantive equality approach recognises that women and men have to be treated differently, and that their disadvantages to begin with have to be addressed to achieve equality (Kapur, 1993). Interlocking identities are recognised.
Akin to equity

5. Empowerment (Rowlands, 1998)
Power to
Power with
Power within

6. Empowerment – other definitions
Kabeer, 2001, 2009: resources, agency and achievements- ability to make strategic choices
Murthy and Rao, 1997: Institutional change in favour of women and other marginalised groups

7. Interlocking identities
Gender
class
caste
religion
ethnicity
age
abilities
Sexual orientation

8. What is the overlap and difference? Equity and GEWE
Differences
Substantive equality is similar to equity
Single identity
GEWE questions development paradigm
Institutional change
Empowerment- does not entail a comparison, equity does
Process as important as outcomes
Interlocking disadvantage better addressed in GEWE

9. What is the overlap and difference? Equity and GEWE
Equity is good for empowerment but not enough
At times women are in privileged economic condition but not empowered
Empowerment is necessary for equity but not enough
Women need to be empowermed and have access to information to make use of opportunities
Some forms – like to VAW do not fall into the ambit of equity