This volume brings together leading gender and politics scholars to assess how women’s political empowerment can best be conceptualized and measured on a global scale. It argues that women’s political empowerment is a fundamental process of transformation for benchmarking and understanding all political empowerment gains across the globe. Chapters improve our global understanding of women's political empowerment through cross-national comparisons, a synthesis of methodological approaches across varied levels of politics, and attention to the ways gender intersects with myriad factors in shaping women’s political empowerment. This book is an indispensable resource for scholars of politics and gender, as well as being relevant to a global scholarly and policy community.

Women are gaining ground as presidents of Latin America. Women leaders in presidential systems (particularly women directly elected by the public) were generally limited to daughters and wives of male executives or opposition leaders. With the election of Michelle Bachelet in Chile, these traditional patterns appeared to be shifting. This book asks: what conditions allowed for a broadening of routes, beyond family ties, for women in Latin America? Do women presidents of Latin America use their powers to enhance women’s representation? While providing valuable insight into the big picture of women in presidential politics throughout Latin America over the last several decades, this book more closely analyzes four women presidents gaining office since 2006: Michelle Bachelet (Chile) Cristina Fernández (Argentina) Laura Chinchilla (Costa Rica) and Dilma Rousseff (Brazil). It assesses the paths and impacts of Latin American women presidents and scrutinizes the ways gender shapes both aspects. No other scholar has offered such an in-depth analysis of the paths and actions of women presidents of Latin America. As such, this book offers important contributions to the gender in politics literature. Its multi-methodological approach consisting of original data collection from field work and in person interviews of political elites and experts combined with an analysis of a host of secondary sources including media articles and public opinion data makes this work exceptionally comprehensive. Its findings are applicable to those studying women, gender, and politics as well as comparative politics, Latin American politics, and leadership studies.

The concept of Women Empowerment reached momentum in the second half of the 1990s. The Gender Development Index (GDI) and Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) put forward by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP 1995) measure some aspects of women empowerment and found that both are sufficient to measure women empowerment at the individual level. Women are the victims of social, political, religious, and economic subordination and deprivation in Indian society. Also, they are treated unequally and cannot participate in democratic activities equally with men. Women throughout the world have been struggling to break away the shackles of bondage, subjugation, oppression and all kinds of ill treatment both within and outside of their families. Without bringing them into the corridors of power where they can formulate policies and programs and implement them, the survival of women is very difficult. In our society, women's political participation as well as representation is very low. Women are also considered second-rate people throughout the world. The low representation of women is a consequence of many factors. Traditional cultural values, obligations to families and children to raise their children, lack of awareness and education, lack of political socialization etc. The constitutional, legal as well as administrative arrangements have led to many changes in women's lives in our society. Women's political empowerment implies the decentralization of power and authority in the deprived, oppressed and powerless people who have not been able to participate in the decision-making processes and implementation of policies and programs of both government organizations as well as familial and societal matters. The 73rd and 74th constitutional amendment also created significant steps towards women's political participation. Today, women receive 'easy tickets' for elections by booking. This challenge lets women come back from the public sphere by present male rule and by other factors. But the quality of her performance is essential to inspect their quantity representation. Other women as a "proxy or rubber stamp" should increase their ability to make decisions and to perform in other important areas. For women who first enter the deep sea called politics, there should be many challenges. It is essential to ensure and improve one's participation in all those obstacles that are needed, particularly in the early stages of representation and the development of the support system.

Despite recent advances in important aspects of the lives of girls and women, pervasive challenges remain. These challenges reflect widespread deprivations and constraints and include epidemic levels of gender-based violence and discriminatory laws and norms that prevent women from owning property, being educated, and making meaningful decisions about their own lives--such as whether and when to marry or have children. These often violate their most basic rights and are magnified and multiplied by poverty and lack of education. This groundbreaking book distills vast data and hundreds of studies to shed new light on deprivations and constraints facing the voice and agency of women and girls worldwide, and on the associated costs for individuals, families, communities, and global development. The volume presents major new findings about the patterns of constraints and overlapping deprivations and focuses on several areas key to women s empowerment: freedom from violence, sexual and reproductive health and rights, ownership of land and housing, and voice and collective action. It highlights promising reforms and interventions from around the world and lays out an urgent agenda for governments, civil society, development agencies, and other stakeholders, including a call for greater investment in data and knowledge to benchmark progress.

This book explains the high level of current concern for the under-representation of women in politics.

Women perform 66% of the world's work, produce 50% of the food, but earn 10% of the income and own 1% of the property. To shed light on why this grim statistic still holds true, Women, Business and the Law aims to examine legal differentiations on the basis of gender in 143 of the world's economies. Women, Business and the Law tracks governments' actions to expand economic opportunities for women across six key areas: accessing institutions, using property, getting a job, providing incentives to work, building credit and going to court. The report uncovers legal differentiations for women and married versus unmarried women such as being able to register a business, open a bank account and work at night. These issues are of fundamental importance. When, because of tradition, social taboos or simple prejudice, half of the world's population is prevented from making its contribution to the life of a nation, the economy will suffer. The empirical evidence does suggest that, slowly but surely, governments are making progress in expanding opportunities for women. It is our hope that data presented in Women, Business and the Law will both facilitate research on linkages between legal differentiation and outcomes for women, and promote better informed policy choices on what governments can do to expand opportunities for women.

"What is women's empowerment, and how and why does it matter for women's health? Despite the rise of a human rights-based approach to women's health and increasing awareness of the synergies between women's health and empowerment, a lack of consensus remains as to how to measure empowerment and successfully intervene in ways that improve health. Women's Empowerment and Global Health provides thirteen detailed, multidisciplinary case studies from across the globe and through the course of a woman's life to show how science and advocacy can be creatively merged to enhance the agency and status of women. Accompanying short videos provide background about programs on the ground in India, the United States, Mexico, Nicaragua, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. Women's Empowerment and Global Health explores the promises and limits of programmatic, scientific, and rights-based work in real-world settings and provides the next generation of researchers and practitioners, as well as students in global and public health, sociology, anthropology, women's studies, law, business, and medicine, with cutting edge and inspirational examples of programs that point the way toward achieving women's equality and fulfilling the right to health."--Provided by publisher.