Measuring Empowerment In Practice

"Alsop and Heinsohn present an analytic framework that can be used to measure and monitor empowerment processes and outcomes. The measuring empowerment framework, rooted in both conceptual discourse and measurement practice, illustrates how to gather data on empowerment and structure its analysis. The framework can be used to measure empowerment at both the intervention level and the country level, as a part of poverty or governance monitoring. The authors first provide a definition of empowerment and then explain how the concept can be reduced to measurable components. Empowerment is defined as a person's capacity to make effective choices--that is, the capacity to transform choices into desired actions and outcomes. The extent or degree to which a person is empowered is influenced by personal agency (the capacity to make purposive choice) and opportunity structure (the institutional context in which choice is made). Asset endowments are used as indicators of agency. These assets may be psychological, informational, organizational, material, social, financial, or human. Opportunity structure is measured by the presence and operation of formal and informal institutions, including the laws, regulatory frameworks, and norms governing behavior. Degrees of empowerment are measured by the existence of choice, the use of choice, and the achievement of choice. Following the conceptual discussion and the presentation of the analytic framework, the authors show how the measuring empowerment framework can be applied using examples from four development interventions. Each example discusses how the framework guided analysis and development of empowerment indicators. They also present a draft module for measuring empowerment at the country level. The module can be used alone or be integrated into country-level poverty or governance monitoring systems that seek to add an empowerment dimension to their analysis. This paper--a product of the Poverty Reduction Group, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network--is part of a larger effort in the network to conceptualize, operationalize, and measure empowerment"--Abstract.

"This document offers an excellent explanation of the concept of empowerment and develops a very useful framework for disentangling and clarifying the concept. It is both practical and well justified on the basis of the literature. The approach and survey instruments developed to measure empowerment are innovative and very useful. Developing an approach to empirically measure empowerment, and to track empowerment indicators over time in a way that is operationally feasible and consistent with World Bank standards is certainly an outstanding achievement."Reginer Birner, Senior Researc.

Large-scale poverty reduction depends on the effective empowerment of poor people themselves. This publication sets out a conceptual framework that can be used to monitor and evaluate empowerment programmes, based on papers written by practitioners and researchers in a wide variety of fields, including economics and political science, sociology and psychology, anthropology and demography. These papers draw on research and practical experience at different levels, from households to communities to nations and in various regions of the world.

Community empowerment has been frequently studied at subnational levels but it is less clear how to measure it at a national level. Mixed methods approaches would be advantageous using quantitative data from databases plus qualitative information to derive a range of variables and indicators. This report identifies assessment methods that have been used and evidence for integrating qualitative and quantitative data for national assessments. When resources are limited or there is no current practice of measurement of community empowerment the simplest approach is to combine a selection of quantitative variables and indicators available in statistical databases. When resources can be allocated a more systematic approach would supplement such accessible data with some form of rapid qualitative assessment. Ideally a formal national monitoring and evaluation system would be instituted that collects all the relevant quantitative and qualitative data and combines these into a regularly updated assessment.

With representatives from different disciplines stressing the central importance of freedom in analyzing poverty and emphasizing some important policy issues, this book offers a view of poverty that will orient research in directions previously neglected, and help those in charge of implementing poverty reduction policies.

Since World War II, development projects have invested more than two trillion dollars towards health services, poverty alleviation, education, food security, and environmental initiatives around the world. Despite these efforts, 20% of the world still lives on less than $1.50 a day and the environment within which all live declines dramatically. There are clear limits to what further investments at this rate can achieve. This book advances the thesis that a more effective and universal foundation for social change and environmental restoration is not money, but human energy. Using this approach Tibet recovered from being nearly deforested to having over 40% of its land area protected under conservation management. Using principles outlined in this book mothers in northeast India implemented a package of life-changing actions that halved child mortality. They parallel the way New York City has created a citywide conservation program over three-and-a-half centuries. Each of these examples is particular to its time and place, yet a shared set of principles is at work in all of them. Improving the quality of life for a community starts by strengthening successes already operating. It involves local knowledge and a relatively simple set of principles, tasks, and criteria designed to empower communities. This highly readable account demonstrates how a comprehensive process for social change harnesses the energy of a community and scales it up with a rising number of participants becoming invested in increasingly high-quality work. Richly illustrated with photographs and stories of innovative people and programs in communities ranging from Nepal to Afghanistan to the South Bronx, it provides practical, proven guidelines for creating profound and sustained social change that begins in individual communities and grows to scale.

What principles should guide an empowerment evaluation? And how can these principles actually be put into practice? One of the primary tasks in an empowerment evaluation (EE) is to increase the capacity of program stakeholders to plan, implement, and evaluate their own programs. This book presents the most current formulation of the 10 principles of EE and provides professionals and students with the tools to put these principles into practice. Through case studies of diverse evaluation projects--including community health foundation initiatives, school district programs, and a $15 million corporate program aimed at bridging the digital divide--the founder and leading proponents of EE clarify key concepts and discuss important lessons learned. Coverage includes how to balance program improvement efforts with accountability requirements; how EE can be used to guide standards-based work; how to use EE in a learning organization; the differences among empowerment, collaborative, and participatory evaluation; and much more.

This book investigates the deep linkages between gender and grassroots politics. It studies how women candidates in Bangladesh are elected in reserved seats in the local government bodies and explores the challenges that they face both from within the domestic unit and from the government administration. The book focuses on grassroots-level governance and provides a comparative study between selected rural and urban local government institutions in different socio-economic, educational, and cultural contexts. It documents loopholes in the system of quota seats for women, allocation of electoral constituency, and elected representatives’ rights and responsibilities. It also studies the life-changing impact of women at different levels of governance and society and offers important policy implications for furthering their participation and empowerment. A major intervention in the study of Bangladesh and its politics, this key text will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of political science, public administration, gender studies, public policy, and South Asian studies.