Women’s empowerment and gender equality are distinct, although closely related, concepts. As the feminist scholar Naila Kabeer highlights, women’s empowerment may be defined as the

"expansion in (women’s) ability to make strategic life choices in a context where this ability was previously denied to them” (Kabeer 2001, cited in Malhotra, Schuler, and Boender 2002, pp 6)7.

Choice, in this understanding, comprises:

“resources, which form the conditions under which choices are made; agency, which is at the heart of the process through which choices are made and achievements, which are the outcomes of choices” (ibid, pp 8).

Kabeer (1999)8 also underscores that the process of exercising choice is empowering only when it does not come with “punishingly high costs”. She also contends that “real choice” requires the existence of meaningful alternatives which women are also able to see as options within the realm of possibility (Kabeer 2005)9.

Agency, or the power that women have to make and act on their life choices in relation to empowerment, implies “not only actively exercising choice, but also doing this in ways that challenge power relations” (ibid)10.

Thus, “empowerment is, first and foremost, about power; changing power relations in favour of those who previously exercised little power over their own lives” (Sen 1997, cited in Cornwall 2014)11. This power stems from “control over material assets, intellectual resources, and ideology” (Batliwala 1994, cited in Cornwall 2014)12.

What this means is that empowerment is not only about expanding women’s access to material resources or providing them the means to enhance their economic situation. It is equally about creating the conditions for critical self-reflection, changing women’s sense of agency, so that women can understand “the deep structural basis of gender inequality” and come together with other women to transform gender power in ways that “benefit not only them, but also other women” (Cornwall 2014)13.

For government policy and programmes therefore, empowerment interventions for gender equality should be about expanding women’s sense of self-worth, (which includes, but is not restricted to, their access to economic resources), and changing the way society perceives women.

To understand how policies and programmes can foster women’s empowerment and gender equality, it is important to understand how gender transformative change works. The following schema proposed by Rao and Kelleher (2002) – known as the Domains of Change framework – highlights how transformation of gender power relations is a complex and non-linear process, straddling:

1. women’s access to material and symbolic resources;
2. institutional recognition of gender equality agenda by legal-policy frameworks;
3. deep change in social norms of gender;
4. ideological shifts in terms of critical reflection, beliefs and attitudes that women and men hold about gender power relations.

Thus, gender-transformative change spans individual and systemic shifts, and formal and informal domains of life. Shifts in one domain lead to, and reinforce, changes in others (as indicated by arrows in the diagram below).

Source: Based on http://www.genderatwork.org/Portals/0/Uploads/Documents/Gender-Equality-and-Institutional-Change.pdf

The transformation of gender power structures is an iterative and ongoing process. It consists of gains, but can entail some losses. These movements, many times involving ‘one step forward and two steps back’ arise through the change process and reflect the likelihood of social opposition and resistance in the renegotiation of power. The Domains of Change framework represents a bouquet of possibilities that the process of women’s empowerment can open up. The specific outcomes or actual change would depend on which pathways to empowerment are available, constrained, or taken; as well as how transformations materialise and are negotiated, in a particular context (Cornwall 2014)14.

Gender equality may be conceptualised as the destination to the journey that is women’s empowerment. It refers to a state of

“equivalence in life outcomes for women and men, recognizing their different needs and interests, and requiring a redistribution of power and resources” (World Bank 2001a, cited in Malhotra, Schuler, and Boender 2002)15.

Equality under the law, equality of opportunity, and equality of voice to shape political decision making have been considered as the critical dimensions of gender equality (ibid). When conceptualising gender equality, it is important to recognise that women as a group are not homogeneous. Women’s needs and interests, and their control over resources and decision-making power, are shaped by the multiple identities they have, including, race, class, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, age, disability etc.

To reach the goal post of gender equality, governments and policy-making institutions must allocate adequate resources for the social, political and economic empowerment of women, especially those who face intersectional forms of discrimination

The introduction of digital technologies in government systems can help in overcoming traditional barriers to women’s inclusion in governance and public participation (United Nations 2010, Huyer 2010 cited in IT for Change 2015)16. For example, mobile-based public information outreach services can help women avoid dependence on information brokers/middle-men in local communities; digitalisation of service delivery can reduce women’s time burdens in filing entitlement-claims and tracking application status; and e-health services can reach basic health care to older women or women living with disability who face constraints on mobility. At the same time, the gender digital divide – the gap between women and men in terms of access to connectivity – can itself emerge as a new factor of gender-based exclusion in governance systems. Therefore, if the benefits of the new digitalised governance paradigm are to reach women, e-government policy and programming should rest upon the following pillars (UN Committee of Experts on Public Administration, 2010)17:

1. Special attention to women’s access to ICT;
2. Design of ICT and e-governance policies and strategies to integrate gender concerns;
3. Equal opportunity to both men and women with information on, and access to, government services and programmes;
4. E-participation of women in political and democratic processes.

Clearly, e-government is not a gender-neutral, technical exercise that will automatically result in a trickle-down of the efficiencies of digitalised state-citizen interactions to all sections of the population. On the contrary, it is an institutional design strategy for gender transformative outcomes (UNESCAP 2016)18. The pillars of e-government for women’s empowerment require public investment to:

1. Create and distribute digital resources;
2. Put in place mechanisms that enable women to transact in the new language of the digital;
3. Continuously assess the context for appropriate channelling of resources and design of strategies;
4. Directly engage with women from different social locations to ensure desired outcomes.

At the level of implementation, gender-inclusiveness in e-government depends upon the infusion of gender perspectives in the new norms, rules, everyday practices and cultures of state-citizen interaction that stem from the introduction of digital technologies in governance systems. More details in Unit 1.2.

Gender-based outcomes of e-government are as important as their gender-inclusive design. The three main components of e-government (service delivery, citizen uptake and connectivity architecture) could bring about gender-transformative change at the individual and systemic level, and formal and informal domains of life. This is explained below in greater detail, through the four-pronged approach of the Domains of Change framework:

1. Enhancing individual women’s access to, and control over, resources: E-government interventions can promote women’s access to symbolic resources (such as digitalised information, opportunities for connecting with others and building networks) as well as material resources (such as social welfare benefits, e-learning and skill based training, scholarships etc.).
2. Shifts in legal-policy frameworks: E-government can contribute to legislative and institutional reform that strengthen women’s digital citizenship. The possibilities for policy intervention are immense and the imperative, immediate. They concern not only gender equality readiness in the technical sense, (such as, connectivity; digital literacy; laws on information, data, and service guarantees; e-participation infrastructure), but also with respect to sectoral policies and strategies of all ministries. Considerations about legal reform on gender based online violence may be one important aspect in many countries. Similarly, privacy online may be another. These foundational aspects are bound to influence sectoral interventions in e-government, whether they be in health or education or agriculture or Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

3. Shifts in deep structures that shape gender norms in a society: This refers to shifts in beliefs, traditions and practices that justify and perpetuate women’s subordinate status and gender-based discrimination. These shifts are extremely difficult to bring about. However, e-government can be a game changer in opening up new opportunities for challenging retrograde norms and ushering in progressive change. The fact that women as individuals can transact directly with government, overcoming cultural constraints on mobility and local vested interests who mediate their access to services can potentially transform their experience of citizenship. By demonstrating accountability to women’s rights as citizens, e-government policy and practice can subtly challenge and change social practices and norms that deny them their rights. These gains are not automatic, but arise through cultures within the policy space that effectively embrace a more transformative meaning of e-government. Normative shift through e-government can be implemented in many ways:

   • Through a rights-based approach that enables women’s access to public information and services,
   • Through interventions that specifically focus on networking, community building and peer support opportunities for women (such as online communities for victims of GBV),
   • Through expansion of deliberative spaces to encourage women’s voice in public policy making and feedback.
4. Building women’s critical consciousness and capabilities to challenge gender power structures. Digital literacy programmes afford a unique opportunity for encouraging women to engage critically with technologically mediated social processes as well as institutional rules and practices of governance. Today, a range of literacies (information, media, data and more) and competencies are required for the exercise of informed agency. To play their roles as citizens, women need to be able to discern gender biases in allocation of resources, analyse data in the public domain and become aware of the windows for assertion of voice. The mandate for what can be gender transformative is clearly laid out for public policy.

Tracking gender-based outcomes is important for all e-government interventions, and not just those which are specifically directed at women. For instance, the disruptive potential of digital information systems even when not explicitly focused on women's needs and priorities may manage to overturn given social norms and create positive disruptions in existing gender orders (UNESCAP 2016). See Box 2 below. These consequences need to be studied and assessed for the pathways that made change possible. On the other hand, the intent of well thought out design can backfire if the social embedding of technology is neglected. Mobile based information outreach for agricultural market prices may not result in desired outcomes to increase women’s access to markets. Not only do factors such as illiteracy pose a barrier, but such interventions, in and of themselves, may do little to alter the gender biases preventing women’s participation in markets in the first place.

Therefore, the design of e-government must explore and deploy the potential of digital technologies deliberately, taking stock at each step of the changes in the socio-political architecture, so that outcomes for gender equality and women’s empowerment are ensured.

1. 1 United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. (2016). E-government for women’s empowerment in Asia and the Pacific. Retrieved from http://www.unescap.org/sites/default/files/E-Government-for-Women-in-Asia-Pacific.pdf , 2016.
2. 2 Kettani, D., Moulin, B., Chakiri H. (2014). Towards a computational model of egovernment for good governance. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/15795683/Towards_a_Computational_Model_of_eGovernment_for_Good_Governance, 3 March 2014.
3. 3 DFID. (2006). How to note: Country governance analysis. Retrieved from http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk+/http:/www.dfid.gov.uk/pubs/files/how-to-cga.pdf, 8 July 2006.
   UNDP. (1997). Governance for sustainable human development – A UNDP policy document. Retrieved from http://www.pogar.org/publications/other/undp/governance/undppolicydoc97-e.pdf, 1997.
4. 4 Parthasarathy, B.(2011). e-Governance for Development: A Focus on Rural India. Retrieved from http://itidjournal.org/itid/article/viewFile/793/334, 2011.
5. 5 UNRISD. (2015). Gendered Dimensions of Development. Retrieved from http://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BCCF9/(httpAuxPages)/1585F4AEF409C253C1257E2700652AA8/$file/II-Gendered+Dimensions+of+Development.pdf, April 2015.
6. 6 ibid.
7. 7 Malhotra, A., Schuler, S. R., Boender, C. (2002). Measuring Women’s Empowerment as a Variable in International Development, pp6. Retrieved from https://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTGENDER/Resources/MalhotraSchulerBoender.pdf, June 28, 2002.
8. 8 Kabeer. N. (1999). Resources, agency, achievements: reflections on the measurement of women’s empowerment. Retrieved from https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~kmacd/IDSC10/Readings/research%20design/empowerment.pdf, 1999.
9. 9 Kabeer, N. (2005). Gender equality and women's empowerment: a critical analysis of the third Millennium Development Goal. Retrieved from http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/53087/, 2005.
10. 10 ibid.
11. 11 Cornwall, A. (2014). Women’s empowerment: what works and why?. Retrieved from https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/184489/WIDER%20Working%20Paper%202014_104%20Women%E2%80%99s%20empowerment_%20what%20works%20and%20why.pdf, August 2014.
12. 12 ibid.
13. 13 ibid.pp 3.
14. 14 ibid.pp 4.
15. 15 Malhotra, A., Schuler, S. R., Boender, C. (2002), op.cit.
16. 16 IT for Change. (2015). E-government and gender equality in the Asia-Pacific - framework for a research study. Retrieved from http://www.itforchange.net/sites/default/files/E-government%20and%20gender%20equality%20in%20the%20Asia-Pacific_0.pdf, January2015.
17. 17 UN Committee of Experts on Public Administration. (2010). Information and communications technology and gender equality: new opportunities and challenges for public administration to implement the internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals. Retrieved from http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un-dpadm/unpan037850.pdf, 19-23 April 2010.
18. 18 UNESCAP. (2016), op.cit.