Decentralization and Women Empowerment: Exploring the Linkages

Empowerment is the most recent policy approach to women in development. It takes into account not only both the practical and strategic gender needs of women but also recognizes their triple role in development. In doing so it follows a bottom-up approach. Empowerment has a number of dimensions with political participation as being one of them. The political presence of women in politics, however, has a disappointing track record. This is because a number of existing structural, institutional and cultural factors offers constrain to their participation in politics. Women’s political presence and empowerment have some obvious links e.g. by having political presence in decision-making structures, women can influence the formulation of policies affecting other women in society. Decentralization provides greater opportunities for the citizen to participation in governance at the local level and hence could be a good policy option for enhancing women’s political participation. It does so by increasing descriptive representation of women, which in turn leads to women’s responsive policies.