Table 1 Definition of Women’s Empowerment

Using Kabeer’s definition, empowerment refers to the “processes by which those who have been denied the ability to make choices acquire such an ability”. It is constituted of three interrelated dimensions:

 (i) Agency, i.e. the processes by which choices are made and put into effect. In relation to empowerment, agency implies actively exercising choice and doing so in ways that challenge power relations. It included decision-making, but also the meaning, motivation and purpose behind these actions.

 (ii) Resources, i.e. the medium through which agency is exercised. Access to resources affects capacity to make strategic choices.

 (iii) Achievements, i.e. the outcomes of agency. Achievements refer to the extent to which the potential for people to live the lives they want is realized.

Kabeer emphasizes the transformative forms of agency and achievements that refer to a “greater ability of poor women to question, analyze and act on the structure of patriarchal constraint in their lives”.

This definition of empowerment has the characteristic of being encompassing and is complementary to the conceptual framework used in the analysis (see below). It is aligned with this study’s objective, which is to explore how women’s empowerment has been studied in relation to user fees, rather than to delineate it, to decompose it into components, or to measure it.