Gender Analysis Using the Empowerment Framework: Implications for Alleviating Women’s Poverty in Nigeria

Poverty is a global problem of economic development affecting over a billion people worldwide. There has been growing inequality not only between rich and poor countries but also between men and women. Despite their crucial roles to the world economy, women constitute 80% of the world’s poor group (Abdullahi’ 2001). This brought about serious gender inequality which has become a crucial part of the development process and an important target of socio-economic policy. In Nigeria, there has been a proliferation of polices, programmes and projects that are derived from different macro-level economic and social policy approaches to third world development. So far these models have not guaranteed sustainable development and hence the quest for viable alternatives. This paper therefore, attempts to provide an alternative empowerment framework for poverty alleviation amongst women in Nigeria. Five different frameworks have been identified in the paper and the paper adopts the empowerment framework as the most viable. The paper concludes that if the empowerment framework can be used, it would go a long way in alleviating women’s poverty in Nigeria. The paper further recommends that poor women must be allowed to define their own ends and means of development. They should therefore be allowed to participate in project formulation and implementation in order to have optimal results.