The Multi-dimensionality of Development and Gender Empowerment: Women’s Decision- Making and Mobility in India

The relationship between development and gender empowerment remains unclear, especially in low-income societies where economic growth has not brought about any noticeable change in gender relations. We argue that this is largely due to the multidimensional nature of both concepts so that different aspects of development may have quite different relationships with different aspects of empowerment. Further, both development and gender empowerment are dynamic processes which require data and methods that enable us to examine their relationship over time. In this paper, we use longitudinal data from the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) on 20,507 women ages 15-49 who were interviewed at two points in time, 2004-5 and 2011-12, to map the relationships between change in important aspects of India’s development with that of women’s autonomy over household decision making and their own mobility. Findings from cross-sectional, over time as well as fixed effects methods consistently show that education has an empowering effect while economic advance has a more conservative effect on gender empowerment. Women’s Empowerment in India 3 The Multi-dimensionality of Development and Gender Empowerment: Women’s Decision-Making and Mobility in India