Gender inequality remains one of the greatest threats to the health and happiness of
women around the world. This thesis investigates how gender inequality affects
women’s levels of happiness. Using household survey data from South Africa and
factor analysis, I estimate the effects different levels of empowerment have on women’s
subjective and emotional well-being. Specifically, I am interested in measuring a pure
empowerment effect, or the effect of empowerment on well-being while holding
consumption constant. I find that the pure effect of higher levels of empowerment
appears to decrease a women’s level of well-being. Although some of the models do
seem to suffer from specification issues, there is evidence that there is a legitimate
negative relationship between a pure empowerment effect and well-being.