This paper investigates the relationship between women empowerment and income inequality. In particular, we examine whether empowering women in terms of raising their political, social and economic rights reduce income inequality. Furthermore, this paper also sheds light on the effects of women empowerment on income inequality in different economies characterized by income differences. Using data for 134 countries from 1945 to 2015, we estimate a panel data model with treatment for endogeneity, controlling for savings rate, arable land rate and age-dependency ratio. Our results indicate that women empowerment in all three aspects (social, political and economic) plays an important role in reducing income inequality. This effect is more prominent in lower-middle and upper-middle income countries and is robust to different measures of inequality and women empowerment, and an alternative estimation technique that takes care of endogeneity.

本文研究了赋予妇女权力与收入不平等之间的关系。特别是，我们研究了在提高妇女的政治，社会和经济权利方面增强妇女权能是否能减少收入不平等。此外，本文还阐明了赋予妇女权力对以收入差异为特征的不同经济体中收入不平等的影响。利用1945年至2015年的134个国家/地区的数据，我们估计了一个面板数据模型，该模型具有内生性处理，控制了储蓄率，耕地率和年龄抚养比。我们的结果表明，在所有三个方面（社会，政治和经济）中增强妇女权能在减少收入不平等方面起着重要作用。