Globalization, Technology and Female Empowerment: Breaking Rights or Connecting Opportunities?

Abstract

What are the main impacts of globalization and new information and communication technologies (ICTs) on female empowerment? The first part of this paper surveys two main disputing arguments concerning this issue through a review of the literature investigating the causal mechanisms that links both dimensions. One stream of academia highlights the negative impacts of globalization. It argues how market liberalization resulted in the weakening of welfare policies and the flexibilization of labor rights. Another stream of literature emphasizes the role played by international organizations, like the World Bank, as well as civil society movements, and highlights how globalization made it possible for women conquer an important place in their societies. This paper attempts to add to these analyses the assumption that ICTs provided differential opportunities to women. The second part of the paper verifies which arguments are most consistent with empirical data. In a panel analysis from 2000 to 2014 we focus on how globalization may have affected female economic empowerment (measured as women’s participation in the work force) and political representation (measured as women participation on the labor force and participation in national parliaments). We find evidence that access to ICTs may represent a crucial variable to enhance women’s empowerment.