Linking development project resources and opportunities to women's empowerment: The mediating role of resource utilization decision-making

Women's empowerment is a key objective of most development initiatives, and improving women's access to resources and opportunities is widely regarded as an important means of achieving this objective. However, access alone may not automatically translate into empowerment outcomes unless women possess the capacity to make decisions regarding the use of available resources. Against this backdrop, this study investigated the relationship between access to resources and opportunities and women's empowerment, while examining the mediating role of women's resource-utilization decision-making using a cross-sectional mixed-methods design. Quantitative data were collected from 335 women beneficiaries of NGOs, while qualitative data were gathered through focus group discussions. The quantitative data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics (Version 27) and IBM SPSS Amos (Version 24) through descriptive statistics and Structural Equation Modeling, which revealed exceptional structural model fit across all primary indices. Concurrently, the qualitative data were analyzed thematically. The findings indicate that access to resources and opportunities is strongly associated with both women's resource-utilization decision-making and their empowerment; however, its direct association with empowerment is relatively weak. The partial mediation results suggest that the relationship between access to resources and opportunities and women's empowerment operates, in part, through women's resource utilization decision-making. These findings underscore the importance of considering both structural access and decision-making capacity in understanding empowerment processes. The study contributes to the theoretical literature by highlighting the mediating role of resource-utilization decision-making. Empirically, it provides evidence from Ethiopian women beneficiaries that access to resources and opportunities alone may not be sufficient to explain variations in empowerment without considering women's decision-making autonomy, offering valuable implications for the design of women's empowerment policies and interventions.