Women in Developing Countries: Assessing Strategies for Empowerment.

WOMEN IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: Assessing Strategies for Empowerment. Edited by Rekha Datta and Judith Kornberg. Boulder (Colorado): Lynne Rienner Publishers. 2002. ix, 189 pp. (Tables.) US$19.95, paper. ISBN 1-58826-039-9.

A focus on women's empowerment is timely as we round the corner toward 2005, the year during which the progress governments have achieved in implementing the Platform for Action (Beijing +10) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to reduce global poverty will be reviewed. In the Beijing Declaration, UN member states declared that "women's empowerment and their full participation on the basis of equality in all spheres of society ... are fundamental for the achievement of equality, development and peace." The Platform for Action was meant to be "an agenda for women's empowerment." The MDGs represent a global agenda for sustainable development; gender equality and women's empowerment are among the eight goals which the international community and UN member states have committed to achieving by the year 2015.

Women in Development adopts what the editors call a "multilevel approach" to empowerment, arguing that empowerment takes place "when individual and group efforts correspond with those of agencies" (p. 5). The chapters focus on initiatives at the international, national and local levels, and point to the rich diversity in strategies that individuals and organizations have adopted to advance women's empowerment.

The editors begin with an overview of the different perspectives on empowerment debated in feminist literature from the 1970s to the 1990s. The first two case studies describe the key advocacy role the United Nations system has played. One focuses on the debates on reproductive health and rights and population policy; a second examines the role of international law and the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Shifting from the macro level, country case studies provide insights into the progress of women in very different geographic, political and economic contexts: the two giants, China and India; the experiences of women under structural adjustment programmes in Niger and Senegal, and in Mexico and Costa Rica. Chapters on the Caribbean region and on Palestinian women in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip look at grassroots initiatives to advance women's empowerment. A key message woven through the book is the diversity in empowerment experiences across issue areas and borders, and the varying roles that have been played by key actors: NGOs, academics and research organizations, and governments.

Women in Developing Countries is a useful starting point for a seminar discussion on empowerment; certainly, this reviewer was challenged by the text to search out additional material and perspectives. Each chapter concludes with a series of discussion questions related to that chapter's key themes. Footnotes and the bibliography offer useful reference material, although some are somewhat dated.

I would like to have seen more discussion of indicators that have been developed to help us determine whether we are making any progress. The UNDP's Human Development Report has two: the gender empowerment measure (GEM) and the gender-related development index (GDI). NGOs like UNICEF and donors like CIDA have developed additional indicators more appropriate for evaluating programmes and projects at the local level. National statistics which provide baseline data are not always reliable indicators of the comparative status of women and men, as gender-related problems about who gets "counted-in" as economically active can often produce misleading pictures of the role of women. The economic contributions of women working in the informal sector, for example, are often absent from labour force surveys.

If "empowerment" is understood to embrace transformation that occurs because of capacity-building--at the household, community, national levels and beyond--what progress can we see after more than thirty years of effort? This question is taken up in the final chapter. The book is more successful at describing change at the local and national levels. There is less discussion of transformation, or the potential for transformation, in some of the multilateral structures outside the UN system that have such a major influence on policy choices taken by national governments: the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the international financial organizations. These questions are increasingly being raised by feminist economists and development researchers; references to that body of work would round out a reading list.

HEATHER GIBB 

The North-South Institute, Ottawa, ON, Canada