Percent of women who earn cash

Percent of women who earn cash

Percent of women who earn cash

This indicator measures the percent of women aged 15-49 who work either at home or outside the home and earn cash. No minimum quantity is specified.

This indicator is calculated as:

(Number of women ages 15-49 earning cash / Total number of women ages 15-49) x 100

Data Requirement(s):

Information on the number of women 15-49 employed earning cash and information on the total number of women surveyed.

Note: Evaluators should include women who earn cash for crops in this indicator.

Population-based survey such as the DHS

This indicator may reflect several types of empowering effects: exposure to networks other than kin networks, information from sources outside the family, and direct access to resources in the form of cash earnings. This indicator is preferred to the alternative indicator, “percentage of women who are currently employed,” because research tends to find that women who are employed but do not earn cash are more “disempowered” than are women who do not work at all. Women who work without earning cash are likely to work on the family farm or to be in dependent situations, which deprive them any outside sources of “empowerment.”

women’s status, empowerment