Abstract:
One of the pillars that can bring about empowerment is building social capital and social
institutions. This study sought to examine the relationship between social capital and women’s
empowerment in Gikindu, Murang’a County, Kenya. Women’s empowerment was measured
as an index capturing employment, ownership of enterprises and decision-making. The Socialcapital
index
was
measured
along
three
dimensions:
groups
and
networks,
trust
and
solidarity,
and
collective action and cooperation. A total of 2806 women were sampled. First we
estimate a probit and an OLS model. We find a positive and significant relationship between
social capital and women’s empowerment. Due to potential reverse causality between these
two factors, we also estimated a 2SLS and an ivprobit model. The estimates showed a doubling
of the marginal effects of social capital after we controlled for endogeneity, suggesting that
endogeneity biased downwards the effects of social capital.
