Female and Male Community-Level Empowerment: Capability Approach-Based Findings for Rural India

Artikel

This paper adds to the empirical research on empowerment drivers by analysing the empowerment of women and men at the community level. Using micro-data from four villages in rural Karnataka/India, our econometric estimations confirm several predictions of Sen's capability approach on potential determinants of empowerment. Education, decent employment, other-regarding agency goals, political networks, trust and fairness coincide with reported impact on community-level change. Gender-specific estimations demonstrate that most empirical drivers of empowerment are quite consistent for men and women in many respects. Some variables, however, notably higher education, correlate with community-level empowerment of men, but not of women, which emphasises different gender roles in rural Karnataka. These findings may help researchers and practitioners to further develop cause-related strategies to overcome major determinants of disempowerment in institutional village decision contexts in general as well as those which are gender-specific.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Journal: The European Journal of Development Research ; ISSN: 1743-9728 ; Volume: 34 ; Year: 2021 ; Issue: 2 ; Pages: 754-784 ; London: Palgrave Macmillan UK

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft
• Subject: Community-level empowerment ; Capability approach ; Gender ; Rural India ; Human development ; Agency

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Schmidt, Melinda ; Strotmann, Harald ; Volkert, Jürgen
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Palgrave Macmillan UK
• (where): London
• (when): 2021

Further information

• DOI: doi:10.1057/s41287-021-00373-5
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:46 AM CET