Title: Women’s Economic Empowerment in Ethiopia: The Concept and the Practice

Women’s empowerment is a broad term used by feminist movements with its exact definition being left to the context of use. Economic empowerment is a narrower phrase that looks at access to economic resources along with the power to control them. As one of the fastest growing economies in the world, Ethiopia needs to understand the discourse around the economic empowerment of women in order to address the current economic disparities between men and women. This PhD proposal focuses on discourse analysis as a tool to answer the following research questions: 1. How does the Ethiopian government understand economic empowerment in its policy frameworks and discourses? How does its understanding differ with international governmental and non-governmental organization working in Ethiopia? How is economic empowerment measured? Who measures it? What kinds of measurements exist? 2. How do the Ethiopian economic empowerment policies and practices increase women’s agency in socio-economic and political spheres? Both gender and development theories will inform the analysis of primary and secondary sources to move the discussion about women’s economic empowerment forward.