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Women's Empowerment and Economic Development

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  • Esther Duflo

Abstract

Women's 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 inter-relationships 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.

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  • Esther Duflo, 2011. "Women's Empowerment and Economic Development," NBER Working Papers 17702, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17702
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    JEL classification:

    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior
    • O1 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

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