Sustainable Socio-Economic Development of Women: A Blueprint from Vulnerability to Empowerment

Abstract

The major goals of women's empowerment are to improve earnings, the standard of living and to enable them to use the resources at their disposal to make decisions that will benefit their households and societies. As such, the socioeconomic empowerment of women is significantly captured in the Sustainable Development Goals SDGs of the United Nations UN. The purpose of the study is to look at women’s education, capabilities, decision-making power, access to financial resources, control over household resources, and ability to mobilize for economic rights to enable them to participate in the economic life of the household and the community in a sustainable way. Considering the research questions and recent past publications, this systematic review included relevant literature on socioeconomic empowerment from 2015 onwards. Both direct and summative qualitative content analysis research approach is used. Google Scholar was used as a tool to acquire relevant data from the significant databases made available by Elsevier, Emerald, Sage, Tailor and Frances, Springers, and ProQuest among others. The review of relevant literature found that the importance of the sustainable socioeconomic empowerment of women makes it an essential development intervention and a constituent of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It also discovered the necessity of prioritizing women's safety when creating programs for socioeconomic empowerment and closely observing the possibility of conflict and violence within households. It revealed themes of socioeconomic empowerment intervention for women to include labour force participation, agro-based entrepreneurship, and financial inclusion. These interventions are geared toward the improvement of participation in leadership and decision-making for sustainable empowerment. Therefore, the study suggests conducting a case study to examine culturally appropriate tactics that can be most effective in giving women economic empowerment in the conventional cultural and economic framework that is dominated by men.