International Labour Organization
SEAPAT
South-East Asia and the Pacific Multidisciplinary Advisory Team

Unit 1: A conceptual framework for gender analysis and planning

Some gender planning approaches and strategies

Women’s Empowerment Framework 

This framework was developed by Sara Hlupekile, a gender expert from Lusaka, Zambia.

Aims of the framework

• To achieve women’s empowerment by enabling women to achieve equal control over the factors of production and participate equally in the development process.

Longwe argues that poverty arises not from lack of productivity but from oppression and exploitation. She conceptualises five progressive levels of equality, arranged in hierarchical order, with each higher level denoting a higher level of empowerment. These are the basis to assess the extent of women’s empowerment in any area of social or economic life. The levels of equality are:
 

Control	Using the participation of women in the decision-making process to achieve balance of control between men and women over the factors of production, without one in a position of dominance.
Participation	Pertains to women’s equal participation in the decision-making process, policy-making, planning and administration. In development projects, it includes involvement in needs assessment, project design, implementation and evaluation.
Conscientisation	Pertains to an understanding of the difference between sex roles and gender roles and the belief that gender relations and the gender division of labour should be fair and agreeable to both sides, and not based on the domination of one over the other
Access	Pertains to women’s access to factors of production¾ land, labour, credit, training, marketing facilities, and all publicly available services and benefits¾ on an equal basis with men. Equality of access is obtained by securing equality of opportunity through legal reform to remove discriminatory provisions.
Welfare	Pertains to level of material welfare of women, relative to men, with respect to food supply, income and medical care, without reference to whether women are themselves the active creators and producers of their material needs

Longwe also distinguishes between
 

women’s issues	which pertain to equality with men in any social or economic role and involving any of the levels of equality
and
women’s concerns	which pertain to women’s traditional and subordinate, sex-stereotyped gender roles

The women’s empowerment framework identifies three levels of recognition of women’s issues in project design:
 

Negative level	where project objectives are silent about women’s issues. Experience suggests that women are likely to be left worse off by such a project
Neutral level	where the project objectives recognise women’s issues but concern remains neutral or conservative, merely ensuring that women are not left worse off than before
Positive level	where project objectives are positively concerned with women’s issues and with improving the position of women relative to men

The framework can be used to produce profiles as below:
 

Levels of Recognition Levels of Equality	Negative	Neutral	Positive
Control
Participation
Conscientisation
Access
Welfare

• Particularly useful for groups committed to promoting equality and empowerment through their work

• Develops the notion of practical and strategic gender needs into a progressive hierarchy.
• Shows that empowerment is an essential element of development and enables assessment of interventions along this criterion
• Has a strong political perspective, aims to change attitudes

• Assumption of levels of equality as strictly hierarchical is questionable.
• Framework is static and takes no account of how situations change over time
• Examines gender relations from the point of view of equality alone, excludes interrelationship between rights, and responsibilities
• ignores other forms of inequality

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