contraception, or punishing corruption - all examples where development investments have not paid off as expected. Labor economists have often pointed to norms in piecework situations, where newly hired workers are discouraged (sometimes violently) from exceeding the current norm for a good days’ production. Existing workers do not want bosses to demand that they achieve higher targets than they currently do, so they make sure that new workers find the increased income from a higher volume of individual production is not worth it. The point often missed by non-behavioral economists is that violating norms has consequences for the individual, their family, and/or their social network (if not they would not be norms).

This economic research on capabilities, hope, informal behavioral rules and economic outcomes ties in very closely with the concepts of empowerment discussed above. An empowered person is someone who has a positive view about the future, can envisage options and pathways to change their life, and has the confidence to pursue those pathways. Research showing that persistent exclusion leads to a lack of power and agency is consistent with the literature on how a gendered set of constraints affects women’s thought processes and behaviors. And the notion that hope (positive aspirations) is a community characteristic is consistent with the gender and economics literature’s focus on women’s need for collective action and social support to move an empowerment process forward.

If poor people need to be empowered in order to get out of poverty traps, cope with adverse shocks, and take advantage of the opportunities that developments such as an expansion of education or new technology brings, then both women and men have to be empowered. Laws, norms and customs which disempower women hold back development. Power inequality in the household between men and women may be one reason why research finds a gap between women’s agricultural productivity and men’s.<sup>8</sup> If norms and customs limit women’s and girls’ mobility, and violating those norms has social consequences for the family, girls will not pursue education and parents will not encourage their girls to make this investment. If women have no voice in local or national decisions about development options, they will not be invested in the outcome, and may not try to make policies or projects successful.<sup>9</sup> They will not participate in the collective action needed to represent and defend their interests and shape their societies. Their insights will be ignored, to the detriment of project design and implementation. National development goals such as a longer life or freedom from hunger will not be met. Recognizing these links, women’s empowerment has become embedded in national, regional, international, and transnational development goals such as the recently enacted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

# **4. Women’s economic empowerment and development**

Given the many connections between empowerment and development processes, it is not surprising that the development microeconomics literature has increasingly included the question of women’s _economic empowerment_ . Initial formulations focused on the issues of providing girls with education and women with the opportunity to earn paid income.<sup>10</sup> Both aspects were seen as key to raising household incomes

> 8 It is not the only factor, however; the burden on women’s time of household tasks is clearly another one.

> 9 The development literature is full of examples of this problem. Several recent ones are discussed in Johnson et al. (2016), including a dairy project in Mozambique, where women were initially not invited to the training by the local project implementation staff, and thus did not properly take care of the cows provided to their household. 10 For example, the MDG on gender equality was measured primarily by the gender disparity in educational enrollment. The share of women employed in nonagricultural work was eventually added as an indicator. In the World Bank’s Country Policy ranking of low-income countries (CPIA), gender equality was initially measured by

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