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Women Empowerment and Economic Development

Esther Duflo

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Journal of Economic Literature 2012 open access

Women empowerment and economic development are closely related: in one direction, development alone can play a major role in driving down inequality between men and women; in the other direction, empowering women may benefit development. Does this imply that pushing just one of these two levers would set a virtuous circle in motion? This paper reviews the literature on both sides of the empowerment—development nexus, and argues that the interrelationships are probably too weak to be self-sustaining, and that continuous policy commitment to equality for its own sake may be needed to bring about equality between men and women. (JEL I14, I24, I32, I38, J13, J16, O15)

DOI
10.1257/jel.50.4.1051
Volume
50 (4)
Pages
1051-1079
Language
en
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BibTeX
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