Sodavann Hak – Decentralization and women’s empowerment

Sodavann HAK

Decentralization and women’s empowerment

Abstract:
Government decentralization has been widely implemented as one of the major reforms in many developing countries’ agendas over the past few decades. Existing empirical evidence has mostly focused on its impact on economic growth, corruption, public service delivery, electoral turnout, and so forth. Very few studies have concentrated on its effects on gender equality, despite the essential role of women in the development of communities and countries. In this paper, we try to contribute to this strand of literature by taking advantage of the staggered implementation of the decentralization reform in Indonesia to investigate whether decentralization improves or worsens gender equality or women’s empowerment.