Sarah Kaplan and GATE post doc Rachael Goodman write in Stanford Social Innovation Review about improving the effectiveness of women’s empowerment programs.
Grounded in the belief that women’s economic inclusion is one of the most unexploited opportunities for improving lives, women have become a major focus of development policy over the past two decades. Microfinance rose to prominence in the 1990s and 2000s based on its success working with women borrowers and microentrepreneurs. Plan International, a large NGO, shifted its focus to girl’s education and empowerment in 2012. Malala Yousafzai won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for her work promoting girl’s education. Many corporate-sponsored development programs—such as the Nike Foundation’s Girl Effect, Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Women Initiative, and Walmart’s Global Women’s Economic Empowerment Initiative—are aimed directly at women and girls. Under Justin Trudeau’s leadership, Canada recently launched a feminist international assistance policy.