Voice and Agency : Empowering Women and Girls for Shared Prosperity.

Front Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- About the Authors -- Abbreviations -- OVERVIEW -- Why voice and agency? -- Context -- Where do we stand? -- Determinants and drivers -- Overlapping disadvantages and agency deprivations -- Overarching policies and measuring progress -- Promising interventions targeting agency deprivations -- Data gaps and the way ahead -- References -- CHAPTER 1 FRAMING THE CHALLENGE: NORMS, CONSTRAINTS, AND DEPRIVATIONS -- Introduction -- Why agency? -- Why does agency matter for development? -- Our conceptual framework -- Overlapping disadvantages and deprivations -- Overlapping disadvantages -- Multiple deprivations -- Focus on key drivers: social norms and the law -- Social norms -- Norms and the law -- Notes -- References -- CHAPTER 2 ENHANCING WOMEN'S AGENCY: A CROSS-CUTTING AGENDA -- The role of cross-cutting public actions -- Changing social norms -- Changing norms by working with men and boys, households, and communities -- Using broadcast media -- A progressive legal framework -- Evolving constitutions and principles of equality -- Supporting effective implementation and enforcement -- Expanding access to justice through customary processes -- Increasing women's agency through sectoral policies and programs -- Expanding economic opportunities and training -- Designing gender-responsive social protection -- Increasing gender equality in education -- Notes -- References -- CHAPTER 3 FREEDOM FROM VIOLENCE -- Gender-based violence as a development challenge -- How large is the challenge? -- Prevalence of intimate partner violence -- Reporting and responses -- Costs of violence -- Individual-level effects -- Family-level effects -- Economywide effects -- Who is worst affected? -- The state of the evidence: What works? -- Boosting of positive gender norms.

Legal reform and responses -- Social support and services -- Economic empowerment (plus) -- Integration of violence prevention into other sectoral interventions -- Notes -- References -- CHAPTER 4 CONTROL OVER SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH AND RIGHTS -- The nature of the challenge -- How great is the challenge? -- Fertility choices -- Early sexual activity and pregnancy -- Child marriage -- Program and policy evidence: What works? -- Engaging men and other gatekeepers -- Improving access to and quality of information and services -- Promoting alternatives to early marriage -- Implementing legal responses -- Notes -- References -- CHAPTER 5 CONTROL OVER LAND AND HOUSING -- Women's control over land and housing as a development challenge -- Potentially transformative effects -- What do ownership and control mean? -- How large is the challenge? -- Existing disparities -- Marital status and work -- Laws and norms -- Default marital property regimes -- Weak implementation of laws -- The state of the evidence: What works? -- Ensuring gender equality under the law -- Ensuring effective implementation of laws and land policies -- Notes -- References -- CHAPTER 6 AMPLIFYING VOICES -- Why women's voice and participation matter -- Driving social change for women's agency: The role of ICTs -- Using ICTs to increase voice and participation -- Addressing the digital divide -- Collective action as a catalyst for change -- The potential of women's political voice and participation -- Underrepresentation and biased gender norms -- Attitudes toward female leadership that affect women's political participation -- Quotas that reduce barriers to women's participation -- Implications for policy -- Increasing access to ICTs and making content relevant -- Supporting collective action -- Increasing accountability.

Finding opportunities to expand women's political participation -- Notes -- References -- CHAPTER 7 CLOSING GAPS IN DATA AND EVIDENCE -- Monitoring change and assessing progress -- Country-level data -- Internationally agreed gender indicators -- Available data and indicators -- Initiatives to close data and evidence gaps -- Composite indices -- Program- and project-level indicators and emerging good practice -- Notes -- References -- Appendix: Background Papers -- Index -- Boxes -- Figures -- Maps -- Tables -- Back cover.

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.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.