Women’s empowerment alone does not guarantee economic justice – Sheila Minkah-Premo

The Managing Consultant at ALC Law Consult, Sheila Minkah-Premo, has argued that empowering women through increased opportunities is not enough to achieve economic justice, insisting that deeper structural reforms are needed to ensure women own and control wealth. Speaking at the 10th anniversary lecture of the Young African Women’s Congress Network on Wednesday, July 29, she said true economic justice requires transforming the legal, economic and social systems that determine who owns productive assets and who benefits from economic growth. “Empowerment is a word that we all hear every day about.

It’s been widely explored within development scholarship. While the literature offers diverse perspectives, it’s perhaps most useful to understand empowerment as both a process and an outcome through which individuals acquire the ability to make meaningful choices and to exercise agency over decisions affecting their lives,” she said. Minkah-Premo explained that economic empowerment goes beyond increasing women’s incomes.

“Building on this understanding, economic empowerment refers not only to increasing women’s incomes, but to expanding their capacity to access productive resources, participate in markets, influence economic decision-making, and exercise control over the benefits derived from their labor. However, empowerment alone does not necessarily produce economic justice.” She stressed that economic justice demands more than expanding opportunities for women. “Economic justice, therefore, requires more than expanding opportunities.

It requires transforming the legal, economic, and social systems that determine who owns productive assets, who exercises control over resources, and who benefits from economic growth.” Mrs. Minkah-Premo also distinguished between income and wealth, noting that the two are often confused despite their significant differences. Wealth comprises land, housing, businesses, savings, investments, pensions, shares, and other productive assets capable of generating long-term economic security and intergenerational prosperity.” Citing the work of economist Thomas Piketty, she said patterns of wealth ownership often expose inequalities that are more entrenched than differences in income.

“As Thomas Piketty has demonstrated, patterns of wealth ownership frequently reveal deeper and more e…