UN Science and Peace Week: The role of African women in the development of the continent
Speech at the UN Science and Peace Week Inaugural Conference Pretoria, 12 November 2019 One of the 2019 Nobel prize winners in economics, Prof Esther Duflo, wrote one of her most famous papers – or maybe just one of MY favourite ones in 2012 in the Journal of Economic literature explaining the bidirectional linkage between women empowerment and economic development. She defined “women empowerment” as improving the ability of women to access the constituents of development—in particular health, education, earning opportunities, rights, and political participation. In one direction, development alone can play a major role in driving down inequality between men and women; in the other direction, continuing discrimination against women can, as Sen has forcefully argued, hinder development. Empowerment can, in other words, accelerate development. Policymakers and social scientists have tended to focus on one or the other of these two relationships. Those focusing on the