This paper explores the contradictions that characterise debates about the relationship between paid work and women’s empowerment. It suggests that this absence of consensus appears to reflect both differences of context and changes in the social meaning of work over time. It also reflects differences in the way that empowerment is conceptualised, with varying emphasis given to the personal and the political, to individual and collective action, and to ‘agency’ versus ‘structure’ in processes of change – in other words, to whether empowerment is seen as being about enabling greater individual choice or about transforming unequal power structures through collective struggle. Finally, disagreements reflect the nature of the work in question, since varying terms and conditions of work hold out varying potentials for transformative change in women’s lives. Evidence suggests that shifts in the balance of power within individual women’s lives (for example, as a result of access to credit) do not necessarily translate into shifts in underlying structures of constraint (for example, in the patterns of access to resources which make it harder for women to access credit than men). The paper suggests that it is the capacity of women to organise around their needs, interests and rights that is most likely toresult in public recognition of their rights as workers, as women and as citizens.