voice and agency: empowering women and girls for shared prosperity
DESCRIPTION
Despite recent advances in important aspects of the lives of girls and women, pervasive challenges remain, frequently as a result of widespread deprivations and constraints. These often violate women’s most basic rights and are magnified and multiplied by poverty and lack of education. Voice and Agency: Empowering Women and Girls for Shared Prosperity distills vast data and hundreds of studies to shed new light on such constraints facing women and girls worldwide, from epidemic levels of gender-based violence to biased laws and norms that prevent them from owning property, working, and making decisions about their own lives. Building on the landmark 2012 World Development Report, it focuses on several areas key to women’s empowerment: freedom from violence, control over sexual and reproductive health and rights, ownership and control of land and housing, and voice and collective action. It explores the power of social norms in dictating how men and women can and cannot behave—deterring women from owning property or working even where laws permit, for example, because those who do become outcasts. The report argues that policymakers and stakeholders need to tackle this agenda, drawing on evidence about what works and systematically tracking progress: This must start with reforming discriminatory laws and follow through with concerted policies and public actions, including multi-sectoral approaches that engage men and boys and challenge adverse social norms. Expanding opportunities and amplifying the voices of women and girls isn’t a zero-sum equation because gender equality conveys broad development dividends for men and boys, families, and communities. Conversely, constraining women’s agency by limiting what jobs they can do or condoning gender-based violence can severely hinder efforts to end poverty and boost inclusive growth. Finally, the report argues that more and better data are needed to measure progress and hold governments and development agencies to account. Download free PDF: http://wrld.bg/CNQwnTRANSCRIPT
VoiceAgencyandEmpowering women and girls for sharedprosperity
Able to make decisions about one's own life and act upon them to achieve desired outcomes, free of violence, retribution, or fear
Able to speak up and be heard, and to shape and share in discussions, discourse and decisions
Why voice and agency?
Agency
Voice
“An empowered woman is one who can help herself and others, who has a job, knows about herself and her environment and her
community. If you join societies, organizations, communities, and other social things, even spiritually, you will be empowered.”
— A participant from a focus group in Ghana (Tsikata and Darkwah, 2011)
Table of Contents
1. Framing the Challenge: Norms, Constraints & Deprivations
2. Enhancing Women’s Agency: A Cross-Cutting Agenda
3. Freedom from Violence4. Control over Sexual and Reproductive
Health and Rights5. Control over Land and Housing6. Amplifying Voices7. Closing Gaps in Data and Evidence
More than 700 million women subject to violence at the hands of a husband, boyfriend or partner in their lifetime
Source: Preliminary analysis of WHO (World Health Organization), global prevalence database (2013) using World Bank regions.
Beyond the human tragedy, violence incurs major economic costs
Often at least what the country spends on primary education
Source: Duvvury et al., 2013
Women often face many deprivations and harmful norms
Source: Voice and Agency 2014 team estimates based on DHS for 54 countries using latest available data from 2001-2012.
Percentage of women
Extensive deprivations in Niger
Source: Voice and Agency 2014 team estimates based on DHS for 54 countries using latest available data from 2001-2012.
Percentage of women
Education is critical in overcoming deprivations
Suffer three deprivations
Suffer at least one deprivation
Secondary education and
higher Primary
education or less
Share with deprivations
Source: Voice and Agency 2014 team estimates based on DHS for 54 countries using latest available data from 2001-2012.
Primary education or
less
Secondary education
and higher
Education is important for sexual autonomy…
Source: Voice and Agency 2014 team estimates based on DHS using latest available data from 2001-2012.
…And reduces the likelihood of early marriage
Girls who finish high school are six times less likely to marry early
Child marriage prevalence in 111 countries
But, fewer women than men report
owning housing…
Control over land and housing can expand women’s agency
…or land
Women’s voices can be transformative
Collective action
Political participatio
n and decision making
Information and
communication
technologies
But attitudes are restrictive
Sources: Voice and Agency 2014 team estimates for 87 countries based on World Values Survey data, latest years available (1996-2012); Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2013.
The belief that women make equally good leaders is correlated with female representation in parliaments
Middle
East
and N
orth A
frica
South
Asia
Sub-S
ahara
n Afric
a
East
Asia an
d the
Pacifi
c
Latin
America
and t
he Cari
bbea
nOEC
D
Easte
rn Eu
rope a
nd Cen
tral A
sia0246
1960/Initial 2010
Aver
age
no. o
f co
nstra
ints
Uneven progress in addressing legal disparities
Note: Number of potential constraints equals 11
Changes in average number of legal constraints by region
Hallward-Driemeier, Hasan and Iqbal, 2013 Women’s Legal Rights Over 50 Years
The need for legal reform remains
Number of countriesSource: Women, Business and the Law
2014
At least one legal difference
between men & women
No laws on domestic violence
Unequal inheritance
rights
Restrictions on women as head
of household
31
29
28
128
Number of countries with legislation against domestic violence
1 2 3 4 813
19 23 27 28 3035 37 41
4754 56
61 63 67 69 72 7476
Momentum for change: the case of domestic violence
Source: World Bank, Women, Business and the Law 2014: Removing Restrictions to Enhance Gender Equality
Promising directions for changing social norms
Access to
justice
Social protect
ion Engaging men, boys,
families, communi
ties Education
Economic opportuni
ties
Media
Gender-Based Violence: What works?Prevention
• Include men AND women
• Engage entire community
• Combine multiple approaches
• Last at least 6 months
• Address social norms around the acceptability of violence
Source: D. Arango, M. Morton, F. Gennari, S. Kiplesund and Mary E. forthcoming. Interventions to Prevent and Reduce Violence Against Women and Girls: A Systematic Review of Reviews. Background paper to the report on Women’s Voice and
Agency. Washington, DC: World Bank. Forthcoming, the Lancet.
Response
• Target survivors rather than perpetrators
• Encourage women’s autonomy and empowerment
• Include psychosocial elements (e.g. counseling) and victim advocacy
Programs enhancing agency
TOSTANWorking
with communi
ties to eliminate FGC
and child marriage
SASA!Mobilizin
g communi
ties to reduce
domestic violence
PROGRAM P
Promoting men’s roles as gender-equitabl
e caregive
rs
“Data not only measures progress. It inspires it.”
-Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Evidence on Data and Gender Equality (EDGE) Data 2X
Internationally agreed core indicators (52)
Internationally agreed indicators on violence against women
Selected New EffortsGaps
GBV: Scarce, infrequent and often underestimated
Access to land: Data not collected at individual
level
Sexual & reproductive health: Scarce
Voice: Limited
World Bank Live Event9,143 page views to date, 4,597 live blog views, 70 online questions submitted
Top 10 Countries: US, UK, Canada, India, Australia, Mexico, South Africa, Germany, Japan, France
Media reception to the report
600+ tweets featuring #WomenCan have captured 10+ Million impressions to date.
On May 14, #WomenCan was the #7 trending Twitter topic in the United States***
and the #2 trending Twitter topic in Washington, D.C.
***A World Bank first
Original “postcards”
posted on the World Bank’s
Facebook channel.
Over 400 news stories in more than 20 countries covered -- US, Canada, Pakistan, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, China, Malaysia,
South Africa, Nigeria, Uganda, Turkey, Morocco, Syria, Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, and Algeria.
Educating Girls: Big Payoff For $45 A Year
May 15, 201411:37 AM ET - NPR Tell Me MoreGirls without an education are six times more likely to marry young than those who've finished high school, according to a new report from the World Bank Group. Guest host Celeste Headlee learns more.
World Bank: 700 million women subject to conjugal violence
Child brides face increased chances of illiteracy, domestic violence, report says
#WomenCan
VoiceAgencyand