Women's contribution in african economies: It is time for a rethink

Abstract

Explicitly defining orthodoxies about women empowerment in Africa reveal that, unlike men, women lack more economic opportunities, which contributes to their declining local economy and that of their respective nations. Although several studies have explored this claim further, most of their analytic portions have substantially surfaced the plausible causal link between other indicators and these nations' economic decline. This emphasis gives impetus to claims of a deliberate attempt by researchers not to posit causal relationships between women's inadequate economic opportunities and their respective nations' dwindling economies. In this regard, there are sketch speculations that any debate about women's role in a given African nation's economic growth is likely to be divided into arguments around their work efficiency. Within such debates, narratives around the responsiveness of such nations’ governance systems to women, and their inherent societal norms, can be chiefly dialectical. By calling attention to issues limiting women’s contributions to economies, this article demonstrates how increased investment in women’s economic empowerment brings forth a positive impact on the economy. It borrows from Galtung’s structural form of violence and Barnett and Hyde’s expansionist theory in deriving an eclectic mix of expositions to support this position. . Based on these expositions, it concludes that discriminatory social norms and practices, and inadequate legislation, are the main impediments to women’s economic empowerment. It proposes, in light of this conclusion, the need to delegitimize norms and ideas that perpetuate women's disempowerment and suggests that it can be achieved, through advocacy and policy interventions, which are context-specific.