Human development: concepts, stages, and theories

¶ … Empowering Women: the Role of Economic Development, Political Culture and Institutional Design in the World's Societies," Amy C. Alexander explores the nature of women's empowerment in various countries across the world. The purpose of the article is to expand upon research that has been done in the area to date. According to the author, scholars have addressed the development of women's empowerment in society from various angles, but have not considered the central source of increasing ender equality in societies. Alexander's purpose is then to provide information to explain this phenomenon.

In order to do this, the article begins with an explanation and a literature review. According to the author's investigations, the literature offers suggestions for the increase of women's empowerment. These include economic modernity factors, cultural modernity factors, cultural legacies, institutional legacies, political institutions, and the status of women's civil society. Alexander's argument is that a comparison of these factors within the various stages of women's empowerment will provide a better understanding of how precisely women are empowered, and how this empowerment manifests itself in stages.

In order to accomplish her goals, the author organizes her article in five parts, beginning with the already discussed literature review. The review includes recent research on cultural modernity and women's empowerment, and identifies a number of theories that are generally applied to women's empowerment. These theories include the human development perspective; the classical modernization perspective; path dependency; political institutional design, and women's civil society.

Part II constitutes the data and methods the author is to use in her research. Because of the nature of the research, she is using data and statistics rather than human subjects as participants in her study. Specifically, this means an analysis that is based upon more than 40 nations from the third and fourth waves of the World Values Survey. The group of nations was chosen for their diverse nations, variety of social conditions, political compositions and empowerment of women. In other words, the inclusion of such diverse data would provide a global view of the issue and a more in-depth understanding of the various stages of women's development. This correlates well with the stated purpose of the research, to obtain a better understanding of the phenomenon across the world.

Part III of the article included the analysis of the data presented in the second Part of the article. The author analyzed the patterns of women's empowerment across the nations chosen for the research, and identified patterns within this analysis. Finally, the conclusion considers the implications of the findings.

Alexander's hypothesis is that modernization theory will explain the early empowerment of women in terms of literacy rates and standard of living, and the transition to gender equality in management, government and salaries. The author also anticipates the importance of cultural modernity in predicting the second, higher stage of women's empowerment in society as a whole. As for women's empowerment in terms of politics, the author is of the opinion that institutional design factors are likely to play an influencing role.

Other issues the author addresses in terms of the various stages of women's empowerment include basic democratic responsiveness and transitions from agrarian to industrial economic modernity.

Alexander's findings showed that the most significant contributing factors to women's empowerment at the first stages include economic development and formal democratization rather than participatory democratization. When transitioning to higher levels of equality, such as in government, management positions and salaries, the underlying influencing factors differ. The study found that, mass values that support gender equality, along with a value system that is oriented towards emancipation, is important to this level of women's empowerment. In addition, Alexander found that economic resources play a vitally contributing role to this. The author notes that the importance of the economic modernity was unexpected, and offered a new perspective on women's emancipation. In terms of broad women's societal empowerment, it was found that the classical modernization perspective and Human Development approach are important in explaining the phenomenon.

Ms. Alexander's article is structured both logically and in keeping with its purpose. Her study offers a broad range of data that are conducive to a broad view of the subject matter, which was inherent in the purpose of the research. I believe that the author did an admirable job of consolidating a huge amount of data to focus upon the various issues inherent in women's empowerment.

The only point of criticism that I would offer is that the range of study was perhaps somewhat broad for the relative brevity of the paper. However, this in itself can be seen as a positive aspect of the study. It provides a valuable springboard for future and extended study in the field. Furthermore, the author treated her topic so well, that the criticism can only be offered in relative terms. In no way do I feel that the piece omitted important information as a result of its data range. Instead, I believe that all the data were consolidated exceptionally well to provide answers to the initial questions, substantiation to the hypotheses, and even additional, unexpected information.

Personally, I initially chose the article because I perceived it as highly relevant to the world today. Democracy, empowerment, and equality are still very much in process in many nations. The fact that Ms. Alexander included a wide range of countries across a wide range of development levels also makes it extremely relevant and important to the discipline of human development itself. Many studies of the kind limit themselves in terms of data, precisely because of the space constraints mentioned above. In my view, the author showed extraordinary courage in the sheer amount of data she collected. It served her purpose well, as she was able to provide both a global and narrow view of the dynamics of women's empowerment.

A further important point is that the study addresses an aspect of women's empowerment that has not been researched before: the dynamics behind women's empowerment at various stages. This provides valuable grounds not only for further study, but also for the current understanding of women's situations across the world. This contributes both to the various fields within human development and to the understanding of cultural and political issues inherent in these studies.