Women Empowerment in India: Assessing Status and Outcomes¹

Empowerment is a process of the powerless gaining power to exercise greater control over the circumstances of their lives. It refers broadly to the expansion of freedom and choices and actions by way of bargaining or negotiation to shape one’s life. Empowerment per se results in substantial outcomes in the form of achievements for those having to choose. Empowerment is not only an end but also a strategy to achieve gender equity in human development and to better education and health outcomes for children.

Much of the discourse on measuring women’s empowerment focuses on various dimensions and their respective indicators. The present paper attempts to understand the conceptual framework for women’s empowerment, the measurement of women’s empowerment, and its linkages with children’s and women’s outcomes. The first section delineates the debate on women’s empowerment, while the second section deals with the measurement of women’s empowerment in India across states, economic classes, religions, and social groups. The paper makes use of NFHS (three rounds) to assess the WEI (Women Empowerment Index) across different categories and analyses the WE and its outcomes from an intersectional perspective. Findings throw light that poor women across all social groups rank low in women empowerment and also have low children’s education & and health and women’s health outcomes. Strengthening the human and economic resources dimension of women’s empowerment through quality employment, and altering gender norms hold the key to realise better outcomes for women and children.