Female and Male Community-Level Empowerment: Capability Approach-Based Findings for Rural India

Abstract

This paper adds to the empirical research on empowerment drivers by analysing the empowerment of women and men at the community level. Using micro-data from four villages in rural Karnataka/India, our econometric estimations confirm several predictions of Sen’s capability approach on potential determinants of empowerment. Education, decent employment, other-regarding agency goals, political networks, trust and fairness coincide with reported impact on community-level change. Gender-specific estimations demonstrate that most empirical drivers of empowerment are quite consistent for men and women in many respects. Some variables, however, notably higher education, correlate with community-level empowerment of men, but not of women, which emphasises different gender roles in rural Karnataka. These findings may help researchers and practitioners to further develop cause-related strategies to overcome major determinants of disempowerment in institutional village decision contexts in general as well as those which are gender-specific.