aes19 International Evaluation Conference

Farida Fleming (Assai  Consult), Neema Nand (Fiji Women's Fund)

Women’s economic empowerment is currently a key focus of funding for development agencies. Expanding women’s economic opportunities benefits both women and society. For example, the benefits of expanding women’s economic opportunities found by the UN Foundation and ExxonMobil Foundation’s research include greater investments in children, reduced poverty for all and enhanced aspirations for the next generation of girls and women. However, the danger is that women’s economic empowerment programming and related monitoring and evaluation is based on an interpretation of economics that privileges a male-identified, western, and heterosexual perspective.

The paper takes a feminist economic approach to further develop existing approaches to monitoring and evaluating women’s economic empowerment initiatives. This approach draws from three key ideas. Firstly, it emphasizes the importance of collectives, in contrast to a focus on individual women. Secondly, it problematizes the household unit taking account of intra-household bargaining and differences in power. Thirdly, it encourages a focus on both women and men in order to see how women’s economic empowerment results in changes in gendered work, especially care activities.

The paper draws from the experience of women’s organisations, collectives and social enterprises in Fiji working to empower women socially and economically.