Dimensions of Women’s Empowerment
Neneng Miskiyah
1,*
Sari Lestari Zainal Ridho
1
Hadi Jauhari
1
Keti Purnamasari
1
1
Department of Business Administration, Polytechnic of Sriwijaya, Palembang, Indonesia
*
Corresponding Author. Email : nenengmiskiyah@polsri.ac.id
ABSTRACT
Women’s empowerment is an important strategy in increasing the role and opportunities of women in improving their
economy and is an effort to increase and actualize their potential so that they are more able to be independent and
work, and are more respected. This study aims to analyze the probability of empowering women in the songket
handicraft business according to dimensions of women’s empowerment. Testing and analyzing the dimensions of
women’s empowerment consisting of welfare, access, awareness/critical awareness, participation, and control of
women's empowerment. In this study we used the binary logistic regression. The results showed that the dimensions
of participation and control have a positive and significant effect on women's empowerment.
Keywords: women's empowerment, gender, dimensions.
1. INTRODUCTION
The involvement of women in the labor market
can illustrate the level of women's welfare and
empowerment. The more women who work, it shows
that the more women are able to actualize themselves
and the smaller the inequality of work participation
between women and men in the labor market. According
to data from Sakernas February 2019 [1], the
comparison of the Labor Force Participation Rate
(TPAK) between women and men in 2019 shows
quite a large difference, the TPAK for women is
55.50 percent, while the TPAK for men is equal to
83.18 percent. Although women's participation rates
have increased in the labor market, women are more
disadvantaged than men. While women are
underrepresented in the workforce, many of them are
unemployed or underemployed, who are part-time and
informal sector workers. In the formal sector, women's
participation is still lower, unemployment is higher,
quality of work is worse, wages are lower, access to
resources such as land and credit is still low and
women face discriminatory treatment in the wage
system .
Gender gap compensation affects not only women,
but families and children whose needs are influenced
by income mothers. This in turn will affect poverty
levels, making the percentage of “poor” women larger
in society [2] . Women take more responsibility, have
to care for their families and carry out social
responsibility to society and they need to be
compensated equally and fairly for doing so. Therefore,
it needs attention because the increasing role of
women in the labor market is expanding and so that
this involvement does not lead to gender inequality.
Women's empowerment is an interesting issue to
discuss. The various efforts made by the government
and society through its programs are directed so that
the benefits of development can be felt in a balanced
way, both men and women. However, this effort does
not yet reflect gender equality, because there is still a
lack of attention and intensity of programs directed at
empowering women. The development of a family
business is one of the steps that can be taken to increase
the role of women in the family to jointly build and
develop the family economy in achieving family
welfare.
Previous research with a similar topic [3] has been
conducted which examines the multidimensional effect
of production, resources, education, time use on
women's empowerment. The results showed that the
highest contribution to multidimensional economic
empowerment came from the education sector
followed by resources, time use, and the least
contribution came from income. Another empirical
result [4] shows that the content of education, the
economy of women's participation, poverty, and the
economic opportunities available to women increase
their empowerment.
Atlantis Highlights in Social Sciences, Education and Humanities, volume 1
Proceedings of the 4th Forum in Research, Science, and Technology (FIRST-T3-20)
Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press B.V.
This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license -http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. 129