Understanding Agency in Woman's Economic Empowerment Policy: an Analysis of Three Programs in India

The concept of agency has gained prominence in development discourse over the past few decades, reflecting a shift away from top-down approaches and recognition of how individuals and communities shape how and whether programs work. This growing emphasis on agency, and calls for policies and programs that build or expand agency across all major international development funders and implementers, has brought increasing attention to what agency means, how it is shaped, and how to measure it. While research on agency at the intervention level has grown, there has been almost no published analysis of how this growing attention has found home in public policies. In this study, we examine three economic empowerment schemes in India. We adapt an existing framework for empowerment to develop a policy analysis tool and apply it to a textual analysis of the selected schemes. We find several key aspects of agency embedded in the reviewed schemes. All three schemes acknowledge existing gender gaps in access to basic resources and services, and make select resources available and accessible to women (factors which can potentially enhance agency). However, the schemes have less reference to control over resources and the conditions shaping that control. For example, interventions targeting intra-household dynamics and social norms around women's work are generally absent. Likewise, while collective action and connections with other social structures are encouraged in the schemes, contextual and normative factors governing women's ability to act for themselves in such structures are largely unmentioned. The addition of measures targeted at women over time in the schemes suggests growing policy intent around gender equity and agency. Given this intent, we believe this type of policy analysis has promise in suggesting pathways for strengthening agency in the design of individual policies or schemes.