The concept of women empowerment has been operationalised, discussed, and critiqued by academicians, policy makers and practitioners. While trying to translate the concept into measurable indicators, the essence of women empowerment tends to lose its meaning and magnitude. There is a mismatch between the concept and the indicators.

Empowerment and Agency

Women empowerment is an overused term, liberally and scientifically applied by academicians, policy makers and even by brands to refer to women power. Many national and international reports, too, use women empowerment as an overarching measure derived from multiple socio-economic and political indicators. The concept of empowerment has evolved over time and it looks at socio-economic and political arenas and beyond. It is a process of upward movement from a position of less power or powerlessness to a position of more power. Historically, empowerment originated as a radical approach in the 1980s for transforming power relations in favour of women’s rights and gender equality. Batliwala (1993) conceptualised empowerment as a process of challenging existing power relations.  In recent times, many researchers have adopted agency as the more powerful term to examine women’s decision-making power. Agency, as a concept, is more inclusive and multidimensional. It is a woman’s capacity for free will, thought, and action. It may not necessarily influence women for an upward movement of position. It may mean decisions taken against conventional norms or social structure. It may also mean capability to change one’s sexuality or religion or run for office. In contrast to all these perspectives, a woman can decide to stay in her own social location because it's her free-will to not change her social location or position. This woman is not empowered but exercised her agency. This also brings forth the fact that a woman who already is in a higher position and making strategic life choices, has not been empowered but has exercised her agency. In addition, there is another section of women who have the ability to make strategic life choices and were never denied these choices but willingly chosen not to make those choices. An empowered woman has certainly exercised her agency but a woman who has exercised her agency is not necessarily empowered at a given time.
Empowerment is achieved or given while agency is inherent. It is only a small part of a woman’s agency that has been moved from a position of powerlessness or less power to a position with more power. Nevertheless, there are many aspects or indicators that are common to both empowerment or enhanced agency. As Naila Kabeer rightly said, empowerment is the expansion in people’s ability to make strategic life choices in a context where this ability was previously denied to them. This interprets that empowered women are those who began to make choices recently which were denied to them. Empowerment requires an examination of a before-and-after position. There may be an intervention or position (or designation), or project that brings this change. More often than not, these interventions assume that women, their potential beneficiaries, are denied their choices. Apparently, the interventions align these ‘choices’ conveniently with their objectives only to ‘empower women’ with their intervention. For example, if an organisation’s objective is to improve the financial condition of women, it will promote its interventions as a medium for empowering women.  
Another crucial question is how long a woman remains empowered after she is empowered. For instance, a woman is empowered when she increases her income, assets, or social network. She may have a constant income, assets or social network after a period of time. If empowerment is a transformative process, does it mean that a woman has to continuously be in a move or does she cease to be an empowered person when she attains a certain desired status? By any chance, if the woman quit or lost the paid work, is she disempowered?

From Concept to NFHS Indicators

Tracking gender disparities at macro level needs measurable indicators. India’s National Family Health Survey (NFHS) provides crucial health and related data of the country. The NFHS has a section on women empowerment. Many academicians and practitioners use the NFHS data to examine women empowerment and derive conclusions about empowerment status. The section has six indicators namely, currently married women who usually participate in 3 household decisions; women who worked in the last 12 months and were paid in cash; women owning a house and/or land (alone or jointly with others); women having a bank or savings account that they themselves use; women having a mobile phone that they themselves use; women age 15-24 years who use hygienic methods of protection during their menstrual period. The first indicator provides data on three household decisions- healthcare, household purchase, and visit to family and relatives. This indicator is ambiguous in terms of its components, magnitude and aspects. There is a possibility that this indicator may include women’s participation in multiple major decisions or just negligible small decisions. The degree to which women believe that they participated in the decision making may widely vary from one region to another. Additionally, the magnitude of the three decisions is not the same, with the first two being too generic and the third one being too specific. It also needs to be clear if the data is for those women who participated in all the three decisions or include
The second, third, and fourth indicators are straightforward and clear about women’s financial independence, control over assets or asset ownership, control over their income and savings in this context. The fifth indicator on phone usage could be interpreted in multiple ways such as autonomy, income generation, social network, or access to information, and so forth. The sixth indicator on menstrual hygiene may be better placed together with other reproductive health indicators as it is too specific to become part of empowerment. Overall, the section attempted to put together women’s control and choices over social, economic, and health aspects. The section completely excluded political aspects. The indicators are left open to multiple interpretations that may result in ambiguity in measuring gender disparity or women empowerment. Various indicators in other sections such as literacy and schooling rates under characteristics of adults section, modern contraceptive use under family planning methods section, violence indicators under gender based violence section, and anaemic indicators under anaemia among children and adults section contribute to women empowerment. The NFHS needs to revise its women empowerment indicators or indicator categorisation before the next survey. The section needs more indicators underpinned by social, economic, health, and political aspects. Another alternative is to leave the existing indicators as part of other relevant sections rather than the women empowerment section.
A Need for a New Indicator in the NFHS

For women to participate in politics and public spaces meaningfully, they need to be safe and free from armed violence. This indicator should be framed separately from gender-based violence. Women do well in their socio-economic status when they are safe and live without the risks of armed violence. For instance, women of countries such as Denmark have shown high performance while women of conflict-ridden countries such as Afghanistan have shown extremely low percentage in socio-economic and health indicators. Ninety percent women of Afghanistan live in close proximity to armed conflict. A report by Georgetown University (2023) shows that women have gone to school less than three years on average, less than five percent of them have access to their bank accounts and the country’s maternal mortality rate is among the highest ten in the world.
India has two major regions that are conflict-ridden for decades. The consequences of Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur, Nagaland, and parts of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh have adversely affected people, especially women in all aspects. Jammu and Kashmir shares border with Pakistan and the north-eastern region shares international borders with China, Bangladesh and Myanmar. De Jong et al. (2008) reported thatdue to armed conflict in Jammu and Kashmir, people were exposed to crossfire, round up raids, witnessing of torture, rape, self-experience of force labour, arrests/kidnapping, torture and sexual violence. Similarly, Banerjee (2014) observed that women’s lives in the north eastern region are complex and affected by immigration and securitisation of the area, increased trafficking in women, children, narcotics and small arms. Due to these complexities, women are unable to participate in public spaces meaningfully, don’t get access to resources and livelihood opportunities, andhealth facilities. There is a direct correlation between safety and peace and women’s well-being. Peace and security indicators are central indicators of women empowerment.

Conclusion

Reports need to examine the relationships between the women empowerment concept and its indicators while framing survey questions and questionnaires. There is a need to focus on the evolving concept of empowerment against agency or autonomy. Besides, the country reports need to take into account the emerging or excluded forms of inequalities and systemic issues across the country.

Author: Prof. Melody Kshetrimayum, Faculty of Academic Writing, FLAME University.