The assessment team found that most USAID partner interventions in Indonesia increase women’s already high work burdens. The income generating project is often an addition to her productive and reproductive work. There are also community demands on women for their voluntary efforts, the ‘traditional’, social and religious demands. In short, women’s empowerment can only occur if the context allows it and if it is part of a broader social, economic and political change in the region. This will require further and continuous education and training through long-term, multi-level initiatives that recognize the holistic nature of women’s roles within the contexts of the social, economic and political world she inhabits and not simply target one facet of it. There is a vast disjunction in Indonesia between economic autonomy and actual status that needs to be better understood by project designers.