Briefing Paper

Social Capital Promotes Women’s Empowerment in Kenya

Women’s empowerment is essential for pro-poor growth and sustainable development. When women are economically empowered, a direct path to poverty eradication, inclusive economic growth and gender equality opens up. One way to bring about this empowerment is by building social capital and social institutions. A team of local PEP researchers set out to understand how and what measures can encourage female empowerment in rural Kenya. The researchers focused their study on women in Gikindu, Murang’a County, where most women work in small-scale crop farming and livestock husbandry, practiced on small family land holdings.