About Power, Agency, and Economic Independence

By Zein Ahmed

At a recent summit on women’s empowerment, one idea echoed across every conversation: economic agency transforms a woman’s ability to make decisions about her home, her life, and her future.

But for us at Love Handmade, and through my work with rural artisans in Sindh, over the years — this insight is not theoretical. We have lived it. We have witnessed it. We have seen it reshape entire communities.

When a woman earns, everything changes — we saw it firsthand

Across all our artisan clusters, Ralli makers, embroiderers, basket weavers, stitchers, tailors, and home-based workers, one pattern was unmistakable: the moment a woman begins earning, her voice becomes stronger.
Not because anyone hands her authority, but because contribution gives her power in a household system where financial dependence once limited her choices.

We saw women who once stayed silent in family decisions suddenly:

•    Negotiate for their children’s school fees
•    Insist on medical care when it was needed
•    Decide how their income should be spent
•    Question harmful practices
•    Set personal boundaries
•    Participate in community decisions

Economic participation became a catalyst for personal transformation. women don’t just earn for themselves — they invest in everyone around them. One of our most profound learnings has been this: women rarely spend on themselves first. They spend on their families and communities. Over the years, we saw countless examples:

•    Mothers paying for daughters’ schoolbooks
•    Women buying fans, water coolers, or small appliances to make life easier for everyone
•    Artisan earnings being used to buy livestock — increasing family income
•    Home repairs and sanitation improvements
•    Emergency medical treatment for parents, children, and in-laws
Again and again, the pattern held: women reinvest their income back into the ecosystem around them. When you empower one woman, you uplift an entire village.

Economic Agency Leads to Autonomy Over One’s Body and Life

In many rural communities, a woman’s ability to make decisions about her own body — her healthcare, her movement, her reproductive choices — is tightly linked to whether she earns. We saw this shift clearly: women who once needed permission to seek medical treatment now had the confidence and resources to go. They could choose when and how often to have children. They could prioritize their mental and physical well-being in ways that were previously impossible. Economic agency gave them the freedom to choose.

Women Lift Each Other — And That Is the Quiet Revolution

One of the most inspiring things we witnessed is how empowered women become multipliers. A woman who begins earning doesn’t stop at uplifting herself. She reaches out and brings others along. We saw women:

•    Teach neighbors the craft
•    Form small groups to stitch together
•    Pool money for raw materials
•    Encourage newly married girls to learn skills
•    Create support circles for widows or abandoned women
•    Nominate other women for training and orders
•    Advocate for community improvements

Empowered women don’t rise alone. They rise together, pulling entire communities forward. This is the real social impact — the kind that cannot be measured only in income charts, but in dignity, confidence, and generational transformation.

We No Longer Need Proof — We Have Seen the Truth

All the insights shared at global forums are important. But what we’ve learned through Love Handmade and our rural projects is more intimate, more immediate, and more powerful: Economic empowerment is not a nice idea — it is a lived truth that reshapes women’s lives at the most fundamental level. It gives them:

•    A voice
•    A choice
•    Control over their bodies
•    Influence in their homes
•    Leadership in their communities
•    Pride in their identity

And it gives Pakistan what it desperately needs: women who are not just workers, but decision-makers and leaders. Empowering women is not simply a development goal. It is the foundation of stronger families, stronger communities, and a stronger nation. What we have witnessed in our artisan communities is clear: When women earn, they change their lives. When they lead, they change the world around them. And that — more than anything else — is the future Pakistan deserves.

Photos: LIFE Magazine