There is a significant tension between the resources women have access to and their actual capacity to make strategic life choices. Traditional data often misses the agency required to define personal goals, leading to an incomplete understanding of economic empowerment.

Evolving our measurement systems is the essential foundation of better policy. By accounting for reproductive labor as a secondary activity and recognizing that cultural stereotypes often outweigh economic barriers like credit access, we can move toward a more realistic understanding of the total workload. This transition involves using high-frequency digital data to track participation as it happens, ensuring that inclusion policies are both agile and targeted to real-world needs.

• Agency is a more accurate measure of empowerment than simply measuring resource ac ...