Empowerment has become a popular, largely unquestioned ‘good’ aspired to by such diverse and contradictory institutions as the World Bank, Oxfam and many more radical non-government organizations (NGOs). Initially, the term was most commonly associated with alternative approaches to development, with their concern for local, grassroots community-based movements and initiatives, and their growing disenchantment with mainstream, top-down approaches to development. More recently, empowerment has been adopted by mainstream development agencies as well, albeit more to improve productivity within the status quo than to foster social transformation. Empowerment has thus become a ‘motherhood’ term, comfortable and unquestionable, something very different institutions and practices seem to be able to agree on. Yet this very agreement raises important questions. Why is empowerment acceptable to such disparate bedfellows? What can empowerment mean if it is the watchword of such different and often conflicting development approaches and institutions? How can such a fluid, poorly defined term address issues of women’s empowerment in a still largely male dominated world?
We are not the only scholars raising these questions. Empowerment, especially for women, has been on the minds of a number of scholars and practitioners, most notably Haleh Afshar (1998), Jo Rowlands (1997), Naila Kabeer (1994) and Srilatha Batliwala (1994). However, most interrogations of the term have focused on ways to improve its effectiveness at the local level. The emphasis has been on grassroots, participatory methods and their empowerment potential for the ‘poorest of the poor’ (especially women). While a welcome antidote to the development community’s long-standing preference for state-led, top-down development, we believe this focus on the local also has profound limitations. In particular, it tends to underplay or ignore the impact of global and national forces on prospects for poor people’s (especially women’s) empowerment, and encourages a rather romantic equation between empowerment, inclusion and voice that papers over the complexities of em(power)ment, both as a process and a goal.
We propose a new approach to women’s empowerment, focusing on four issues. First, since even the most marginalized, impoverished communities are affected by global and national forces, we believe empowerment must be analysed in global and national as well as local terms. Global forces, whether economic, political or cultural, are both marginalizing some and enhancing the power of others. But no one is left untouched. Moreover, this is a highly gendered process. To ignore the multilevel, interrelated character of these struggles, even in poor, marginalized communities, is to misunderstand empowerment in our increasingly interconnected global/local world.
Second, understanding and facilitating women’s empowerment requires a more nuanced analysis of power. Empowerment is not simply the ability to exert power over people and resources. Drawing on Foucault’s writings, we argue that empowerment involves the exercise rather than possession of power. This approach reminds us that empowerment cannot transcend power relations; it is enmeshed in relations of power at all levels of society. At the same time, such an analysis allows us to open up development praxis to scrutiny by feminist theories of power in order to explore issues of structure and agency. In agreement with Rowlands, we believe empowerment must be understood as including both individual conscientization (power within) as well as the ability to work collectively, which can lead to politicized power with others, which provides the power to bring about change.
Third, although empowerment is a process whereby women and men experience as well as challenge and subvert power relationships, it takes place in institutional, material and discursive contexts. Whether gaining skills, developing consciousness or making decisions, individual empowerment takes place within the structural constraints of institutions and discursive practices. Groups become empowered through collective action, but that action is enabled or constrained by the structures of power that they encounter. We believe much closer attention must be paid to the broad political and economic structures, cultural assumptions and discourses, notions of human rights, laws and practices in which women and men seek to survive and even flourish in marginalized communities around the world.
Finally, we believe empowerment is both a process and an outcome. It is a process in that it is fluid, often unpredictable, and requires attention to the specificities of struggles over time and place. Empowerment can also be seen as an outcome that can be measured against expected accomplishments. Attempts to measure outcomes are important as a means for keeping development practitioners and policy-makers honest. At the same time, we caution against a too ready assumption that the achievement of stated goals is proof of individual or group empowerment (see Kabeer 1999).
Rethinking Empowerment brings together scholar/activists who are concerned with women’s empowerment but believe it can only be understood and facilitated if we bring these four dimensions into both analysis and praxis. To that end, several chapters address the way new social movements and multilateral institutions use and abuse the concept and practice of empowerment. They remind us that empowerment approaches are always embedded in institutional structures and must be understood at that level. At the same time, certain development practices and issues have become associated with the empowerment approach, most notably education, micro credit, grassroots participatory approaches, land rights and representation. A number of chapters explore these ‘solutions’, arguing against an uncritical acceptance of their empowerment potential. They call for a careful, contextual analysis framed in the broad forces at play in national, regional and global contexts. Finally, although all chapters link the global, national and the local, several authors take up the challenge of thinking about the empowerment potential of cyberspace, global migration patterns and an increasingly international, proactive civil society.
In order to think about em(power)ment in new ways, we need to explore its diverse and complex history. While Paulo Freire (1973) did not use the term, his emphasis on education as a means for conscientizing and inspiring individual and group challenges to social inequality provided an important backdrop for social activists concerned with empowering the poor and marginalized (Stromquist, this volume). Intellectuals and activists in the South, and to a lesser extent the North, drew on Freire and others to expand the concept of empowerment. Social activists concerned with poverty issues saw empowerment as a local, grassroots endeavour, designed to inspire the poor to challenge the status quo. On the other hand, business and personnel managers generally thought of empowerment as a means for improving productivity within established structures. Mainstream development agencies adopted this interpretation in the 1990s, when they too began to use the language of empowerment, participation and people’s development. Thus, empowerment seems to fit many shoes.
How can we explain this seeming paradox? How can empowerment have such different meanings and consequences? The explanation may lie in the fluidity of the term ‘power’. To empower implies the ability to exert power over, to make things happen. It is an action verb that suggests the ability to change the world, to overcome opposition. It has a transformatory sound, an implicit promise of change, often for the better. Consequently, empowerment has often been the watchword of crusaders trying to make the world a better, more equitable place. But this change is often seen as requiring a revolution or, at the very least, fundamental social transformation (Wolf 1999: 4–8; Scott 1990). Others hold a more benign view of power, one that emphasizes the potential for rational discussion and evolutionary change within modern societies. Associated with liberal arguments about modernization and democracy, this approach assumes even marginalized people can bring about change by mobilizing to convince the powerful of the need for change. While apparently different, both perspectives are captured by the notion that power is largely the ability to exert power over institutions, resources and people (Held et al. 1999).
In order to understand the limitations of these approaches to empowerment and power, we need to explore some of the more nuanced notions of power that have emerged since the 1970s. Steven Lukes rejects the notion that power is simply control over institutions and resources, and argues instead that power is wielded by controlling the agendas and thinking of others (1974: 23–4). Michel Foucault moves the analysis further. Rejecting the notion that power is something held by individuals or groups (and not others), he argues that it permeates society. It is fluid, relational and exists only in the everyday relationships of people, both individually and in institutions. Such power can lead to repressive practices that are expressed in disciplined bodies, actions and thoughts/discourses. While much of Foucault’s work has centred on the disciplinary, disempowering nature of modern power, he recognizes that relations of power inspire resistance as well (Foucault 1979, 1991; McNay 1992). In this regard, we find Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson’s reading of Foucault useful, especially their argument that Foucault did not see resistance ‘in a disembodied duel with power’ (1997: 19), but rather as a complex interaction. People are empowered and changed through resisting disciplinary power relations, but this very action/agency may also strengthen their incorporation into the status quo. While this analysis illuminates the workings of power (and empowerment) at the individual and institutional level, Foucault has less to say about the impact of larger political and economic structures. Moreover, his analysis is relentlessly European and male-focused. A more feminist and global analysis is required if we are to rethink women’s empowerment in comparative perspective.
Since the 1980s, feminists have in fact contributed important insight to these debates. Most feminists have started from querying the concept of power as simply power over people and resources. An arena of politics that has been particularly important for understanding the concept of public power as power over has been that of the state. Feminist scholars have addressed this issue in terms of both the institutional power of the state to privilege some (male) interests over other (female) ones and its capacity to maintain gender inequalities (MacKinnon 1987). They have also examined the question of state power in the context of the state’s monopoly of violence and its claim to the legitimate use of this violence. Third World feminists in particular have sought to engage with state-based resources and agencies, and to theorise from their experiences of such engagements (Parpart and Staudt 1989; Agnihotri and Mazumdar 1995; Rai and Lievesley 1996). Attempting to address some of the differences among feminist analyses of state-based power, Tetreault, among others, has sought to explore whether state/institutions can become ‘authorised’ as opposed to being in power by demonstrating ‘over and over’ the ‘hard resources’ of ‘expertise, eloquence, judgement and competence’ (Tetreault and Teske 2000: 276). In doing so she has sought to reinforce Hannah Arendt’s distinction between power and authority, and ultimately a feminist vision of public power. Others have rejected the domain of state power, seeing it as unimportant to feminist politics (Allen 1990). Participation in institutional and public political life is therefore empowering for some and disempowering for others.
Those who found the preoccupations with the state unsatisfactory and disempowering have found Foucauldian theory useful for challenging the dominant assumption that power is a possession exercised over others within familiar boundaries of state, law or class. They have been attracted to his focus on bodies as sites of power and to his notion of power as fluid, relational and embedded in struggles over meanings/discourses (Hekman 1996). Others have used the expanded boundaries of power that Foucauldian thought opens up to query the concept of empowerment itself. Anna Yeatman, for example, worries that the term is reproducing the hierarchy between the powerful protector (the state, the elite) and the powerless (i.e. women, children and the poor), who are seen as helpless, passive and needy. She would rather use the term ‘empowering’, which is interchangeable with ‘capacitating’ or ‘enabling’ (1999). Other feminists argue that Foucault’s vision of power encourages a relativist position where all transformative politics become suspect (Fraser 1989; Hartsock 1990).
Individual and collective participation has, as noted above, been an important foundational concept for analysing empowerment. Participation in challenges to hegemonic systems and discourses has often inspired both greater self-understanding and political action in women’s private and public lives. Involvement in the politics of subversion is thus empowering in itself, even if it fails to transform immediately dominant power relations. As Patricia Hill Collins points out, ‘change can also occur in the private, personal space of an individual woman’s consciousness. Equally fundamental, this type of change is also empowering’ (1991: 111). However, feminist scholars have also worried about the differential burdens of participation (Phillips 1999). Working-class women and women from some ethnic and religious groups do not have the resources of time and money to be empowered through participation in collective action, or the costs of their participation is disproportionately high. From a different perspective Third World and black feminist scholars and activists have also reminded us that individual conscientization does not necessarily lead to progressive politics. The language of women’s empowerment has been used by right-wing political groups and parties to inspire Hindu women to resist the ‘pseudo-secularism’ of the male, Westernized elites who have granted Muslim and other minorities ‘concessions’ not available to the Hindu majority (Butalia and Sarkar 1996). While this rhetoric has inspired Hindu women’s agency in defence of the dharma (faith), such empowerment obviously poses important questions for other communities, as well as for Hindu women who do not subscribe to this interpretation of empowerment.
We believe these different approaches/arguments need to, and can, be brought together if we are to think about empowerment in new ways. Foucault’s exposition of power allows us to move away from more traditional notions of power as the ability to exert power over structures, people and resource. It reminds us that power is fluid, relational and connected to control over discourses/knowledge. It is therefore an important insight for feminist analyses of power and empowerment. However, we would also insist upon focusing on the relationship between structures and agency, of challenge and transformation which transcend the bounds of discursive ‘normality’ (see also Deveaux 1996: 230–7). This allows feminists to make judgements about the nature of their experience of structures and discourses of power, and their own political judgements and actions. It also allows us to incorporate notions of power that recognize the importance of individual consciousness/understanding (power within), and its importance for collective action (power with) that can organize and exert power to challenge gender hierarchies and improve women’s lives (see also Rowlands 1997: 13). These insights inform our analysis of empowerment, power and gender as it relates both to broad questions of development and gender equality, and to specific empowerment interventions. For this, we must explore the intersection between development, power and empowerment, both in theory and practice.
Various interpretations of power and empowerment have influenced the thinking and practice of development practitioners and theorists. The development enterprise was introduced in the 1940s as a very top-down affair. It was seen as a technical problem that could be solved by transferring Northern knowledge to Southern clients. This was regarded as an unproblematic, noble endeavour. By the 1970s, however, the failure of many development projects inspired critiques, most notably from South America. These scholars accused Northern capital of deliberately marginalizing the South, of creating dependency to ensure a source of raw materials and markets for their manufactured goods. They called for self-reliance and the transformation of the world system (Amin 1974; Wallerstein 1979). While holding different conceptions of capital, both perspectives agree that power is defined by control over resources, people and institutions.
More recent critiques have retained this critical stance towards the Northern development establishment, but emphasize the power of development discourse to define development as a technical ‘problem’ requiring intervention by Northern expertise. This process, they argue, has effectively silenced the voices and knowledge of marginalized peoples around the world. They call for a new approach, one based on equitable and respectful partnership and collaboration between the North and the South, with due attention to local knowledge and accumulated wisdom in the periphery (Crush 1995; Escobar 1995; Friedmann 1992). Some critics of this approach, while acknowledging the power of discourse, remind us that even the apparently ‘powerless’ can sometimes turn development discourse to their own ends, using it as a basis for their demands (Cooper and Packard 1997). For both critiques, the relationship between structure, discourse and agency is critically important – though conceived of differently.
These critiques have found allies in the work of small-scale alternative development organizations, most notably NGOs that take pride in working outside and even challenging ‘the system’. These organizations have tended to focus on local communities and have been deeply influenced by the participatory, people-first approach to development of Robert Chambers (1997). His set of practical, assessable methods for grassroots, participatory development, characterized as participatory rural appraisal (PRA), has become the staple methodology for alternative development practitioners (see Parpart, this volume). Understandably this methodology and approach initially found little support among established development agencies with their government-to-government agreements and their concern to protect established power structures.
At the level of individual development, Amartya Sen’s work on human capabilities stresses empowerment as both a means and an end. It is a process of developing individual capacities through gaining education and skills in order to empower individuals to fight for a better quality of life (1990, 1995). Sen sees poverty as an indication of the inability of people to meet their basic needs, whether physical or more intangible, through participation, empowerment and community life (Dreze and Sen 1989). Sen criticizes development economics for emphasizing quantity, such as longevity, rather than the quality of lives led (Crocker 1995: 156). He points out that women in particular face social as well as physical problems and that ‘the remedies sought have to take note of the nature of the constraints involved and extent to which they can be removed’ (Dreze and Sen 1989: 44). While one may quarrel with Sen’s lack of attention to the political processes required for equitable resource distribution, he raises some important issues for the study of empowerment. However, he too assumes that human empowerment is best carried out at the local communities where most people live their lives (Rai, 2002). Though Sen’s focus on capabilities provides a framework for the study of empowerment, feminists need to be wary of his argument about the universal right to development and his lack of attention to the political processes required for equitable resource distribution that could lead to general empowerment.
While mainstream development agencies remained, for the most part, rather sceptical of these arguments, their many failures have led some practitioners to question top-down, state-led development practice. Neo-liberal sympathisers have taken these failures as proof of the need to reduce the size and function of the state, leaving development to the wisdom of market forces. This has been argued with increasing force as the globalization of world markets reduces the relevance of states around the world (Hoogvelt 1997). At the same time, growing doubts about state capacity and commitment to development goals in the South have led to demands for good governance, democracy and economic liberalization. These demands are seen as requiring institutional reform based on accountability, democracy and grassroots participation in governance, including recognition of the importance of ‘listening to and learning from the poor’ (World Bank 1999: 153). In their efforts to operationalize these goals, mainstream development agencies have adopted many of the techniques of alternative development practices. The language of participation and empowerment has entered mainstream development discourse. Increasingly projects must express sensitivity to community concerns and a willingness to work with the poor. Even the current preoccupation with knowledge-based development is often cast in terms of participation, empowerment and partnership within specific, small-scale communities (Rugh and Bossert 1998; World Bank 1998). Thus, the language of empowerment, whatever the development perspective, remains largely rooted in the local – it is seen as the business of grassroots, small-scale communities. This is largely true for considerations of women’s empowerment as well.
Scholars and activists concerned with women, gender and development have both contributed to and been influenced by these debates. Development initially was a largely gender-blind endeavour, but by the 1970s some practitioners had recognized the need to help women, albeit largely within the status quo. The limitations of this approach inspired a shift to gender in the 1980s, and a growing awareness that deeply held attitudes about femininity and masculinity influenced gender relations and reinforced women’s subordination. This gender and development (GAD) approach highlighted the role of culture as well as socio-economic inequalities in women’s subordination (Young 1993; Sen and Grown 1988), but remained largely captured by Western notions of development, with their focus on economic solutions to development problems (Hirshman 1995).
By the late 1980s, activists and theorists from the South, and to a lesser extent from the North, began to discuss the need for a new approach, one that highlights the need for women to become empowered so they can challenge patriarchal and political-economic inequalities. Gita Sen and Caren Grown introduced the term in their landmark book, Development, Crises and Alternative Visions: Third World Women’s Perspectives (1988). They offered a vision of empowerment rooted in a commitment to collective action growing out of the specific problems and contexts facing women (and men) in the South, whether economic, political or cultural. While rather utopian in tone, the book calls for a collective vision, a set of strategies and new methods for mobilizing political will, empowering women (and poor men) and transforming society. The authors put considerable faith in the transformative potential of ‘political mobilization, legal changes, consciousness raising, and popular education’ (1988: 87). Caroline Moser (1989, 1993) expanded on the term, particularly in regard to development planning, and did much to publicize its importance and its international roots.
Writings on empowerment and gender as an approach to development have continued to emerge in the alternative development literature, especially from the South. In 1994, for example, Srilatha Batliwala warned that ‘empowerment’, which had virtually replaced terms such as poverty alleviation, welfare and community participation, was in danger of losing its transformative edge. She called for a more precise understanding of both power and empowerment, one that sees power ‘as control over material assets, intellectual resources, and ideology’ (1994: 129). For Batliwala, empowerment is ‘the process of challenging existing power relations, and of gaining greater control over the sources of power’ (1994: 130). It requires political action and collective assault on cultural as well as national and community power structures that oppress women and some men. Thus, while acknowledging the need to improve the lives of grass-roots women, Batliwala insists that women’s empowerment must include transformative political action as well.
Naila Kabeer (1994) also insists on the centrality of empowerment for the struggle to achieve gender equality. Drawing on the work of Lukes (1974), she criticizes the liberal and Marxist emphases on power over resources, institutions and decision-making, adding Lukes’s (1974) argument that power also consists of being able to control discussions/discourses and agendas. She argues, however, for a more feminist approach to power, one that emphasizes the transformative potential of power within. This power is rooted in self-understanding that can inspire women (and some men) to recognize and challenge gender inequality in the home and the community (1994: 224–9). Like Batliwala, she emphasizes collective, grassroots participatory action – the power to work with others ‘to control resources, to determine agendas and to make decisions’ (1994: 229). More concerned with action than theory, she continues to explore practical, measurable ways to empower women, especially at the local level (Kabeer 1999).
Jo Rowlands (1997, 1998) brings a broader analytical perspective to the discussion of gender and empowerment. Drawing on Foucault and feminist writings, she argues that ‘empowerment is more than participation in decision-making; it must also include the processes that lead people to perceive themselves as able and entitled to make decisions’ (1997: 14). It is personal, relational and collective. She recognizes that empowerment is not just a gender issue but also a development issue affecting women and men. While acknowledging the complexity and difficulties of empowerment as a concept and a practice, she remains convinced that the key to empowerment lies in mobilizing marginalized people, especially women. She cautions, however, that empowerment is a process rather than an end product, neither easily defined nor measured. At the same time, she believes ‘there is a core to the empowerment process … which consists of increases in self-confidence and self-esteem, a sense of agency and of “self” in a wider context, and a sense of dignidad (being worthy of having a right to respect from others)’ (1997: 129–30).
Initially, mainstream development agencies concerned with women ignored the language of empowerment, but as top-down development failed to alleviate poverty in the 1990s, especially among women, the discourse began to change. Empowerment entered the lexicon of mainstream women/gender and development discourse. For example, the Beijing Platform for Action states emphatically that women’s empowerment is ‘fundamental for the achievement of equality, development and peace’ (UN 1996: para.13). The Canadian International Development Agency’s (CIDA) Policy on Gender Equality includes women’s empowerment as one of the eight guiding principles for its policy goals (1999). While mainstream development agencies generally emphasize the reformative rather than the transformative nature of empowerment (World Bank 1995), at the level of discourse, both alternative development practitioners and mainstream empowerment advocates increasingly use the language of empowerment when discussing women/gender and development, albeit largely within the rubric of small-scale, grassroots community development (Friedmann 1992; Craig and Mayo 1995).
This seeming congruence of policy and approach obscures the difficulties faced by those trying to understand, implement and measure women’s empowerment. While the very instability of the term has its advantages – for empowerment varies by context and condition – that same fluidity impedes our understanding and implementation of empowerment. Some practitioners and scholars focus on personal empowerment. Indeed, Caroline Moser places self-reliance and internal strength at the centre of empowerment. For her, empowerment is the ability ‘to determine choices in life and to influence the direction of change, through the ability to gain control over crucial material and non-material resources’ (1993: 74–5). Others emphasize collective empowerment, noting the fragility of individual efforts (Kabeer 1994). Always concerned with transforming ideals into practice, Moser remains sceptical about the willingness of mainstream development agencies to embrace the grassroots, participatory small-scale methods of the empowerment approach in a meaningful way (1993: 87–99). Moreover, as Kabeer points out, attempts to measure (and direct) empowerment are often based on the assumption that ‘we can somehow predict the nature and direction that change is going to assume. In actual fact, human agency is indeterminate and hence unpredictable in a way that is antithetical to requirements of measurement’ (1999: 462).
Rethinking Empowerment is in many ways a response to these challenges for we believe the tension between agency and structures, and their interrelationships, lies at the heart of the empowerment debate. While Moser is correct in pointing out that any challenge to structural power will alienate the mainstream development agencies, one also needs to reflect upon how the capacitating/agency of women (and poor men) can be achieved without some transformation of existing power relations. Anne Phillips has addressed this question by pointing out that today few would expect to be able to eliminate (as opposed to ameliorate) structural inequalities embedded in the production regimes of capitalism. The focus of the debate should be on inequality of distribution (1999: 17). Only then can the issue of capacity enhancement be directly linked to redistribution of resources. Negotiations with, and challenges to, the state (and global forces) then become an important part of collective action leading to women’s empowerment. This factors in the agency of political actors as much as it pays attention to structural power. David Marquand, for example, argues that only an empowered and active citizenry can make any progress towards social equality (1997:41). The two aspects need to be held together, sometimes in tension, to understand the nature of change through the politics of collective (and individual) action at all levels of political institutions – local, national and global. Thus, we believe empowerment for women (and men) cannot be understood only at the local level. It requires attention to the specific historical struggles of women and men within the structures and discourses of power operating at micro-, mesoand macro-levels.
While the focus on the local remains central to most advocates of empowerment, some members of the development studies community have become increasingly concerned with the role of national and global politics (Stiles 2000). We believe these discussions need to be brought together. The growing power of global corporate and financial forces in an increasingly unequal world has inspired new thinking about potential solutions to the disempowerment and marginalization of peoples around the world. Some see globalization as a potential tool for empowerment. From this perspective, globalization and economic liberalization go hand in hand, providing benefits for women, the poor and the world; the uneven, gendered character of much globalization is rarely acknowledged (Held et al. 1999). A more nuanced view of globalization acknowledges the fact that free trade and global shifts in productivity have led to casualization and feminization of certain labour sectors, resulting in additional burdens on women and tensions within the family for women as gender relations get reconfigured. However, it also points to the opening of opportunities for women, albeit often affected by race and class. Professional women inhabiting the world of international finance or involved in international bureaucratic machineries are positioned very differently from white Russian women looking to improve their life chances by consenting to become ‘catalogue brides’, and still more differently from Filipina domestic workers in Canada and elsewhere (Gardiner Barber, this volume). Globally, women own little of the world’s property; and therefore tend to be involved in the globalization process through their access to labour markets rather than financial or production markets. They are providers of services, often poorly paid and rarely in control of the huge financial and export flows of global enterprises (Marchand and Runyan 2000).
Yet within the limits of women’s opportunities, some possibilities for empowerment exist. We need to analyse the impact of gendered roles for women within markets if we are to understand the possibilities and the challenges facing women in this context. Women’s specific positioning in markets poses questions about the nature and functioning of markets, the values and behaviour that they generate and the controls and mechanisms of accountability that are required to participate (Lairap-Fonderson, this volume; Freeman 2001). We also have to know what market factors intensify a consciousness of rights and a willingness to undertake collective and individual actions to improve women’s position in the global workforce (Gardiner Barber, Lairap-Fonderson and Desai, this volume). Questions need to be raised about how women can be empowered to take advantage of the markets they can access, or to push open the doors of those they cannot.
If globalization is about markets, it is also about space. James Rosenau, for example, writes of ‘globalization as boundary-eroding’ and ‘localization as boundary-strengthening’ (1997: 81). On the one hand, new technologies allow the possibility of thinking about the world as one. Some argue that this ‘overcoming’ of space through communication technology is producing new identities as well as opportunities for men and women (Youngs, this volume). At the same time, technology is spatially located itself – more urban than rural, more accessible for the middle classes than for the poor, and more accessible for men than women. This is not to minimize the importance of these advances, only to caution about the limits of their possibilities. Globalization can also enhance ‘boundary-strengthening’ when it is perceived as hegemonic cultural domination. As Paul Lubeck argues, the rise of Islamism under globalization can be seen both as a reaction against the dominant political power of the USA, and as an integration of the wider, global Islamic community through communication, travel and trade (2000: 153). For Muslim women, participation in a global community of Islam can be both a problem and an opportunity, as demonstrated by Shaheen Sardar Ali’s chapter (this volume). Thus, global/local space raises important questions for thinking about women’s empowerment.
A third aspect of the globalization debate is governance, although again this is rarely a gendered discussion. Some ‘globalists’ argue that the state’s regulatory role is being taken over by multilateral organizations. They look to international organizations and legal instruments for solutions, pinning their hopes on the regulatory effect of the United Nations, the World Court and bodies such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). However, recent protests at the WTO meeting in Seattle and the World Bank/IMF meeting in Washington reveal a growing scepticism about this option. Although some authors argue that recent protests demonstrate the capacity of citizen activists to reign in global institutions (Liebowitz 2000: 41; Finnegan 2000; Naim 2000; Staudt et al. 2001), others believe these global organizations are no longer accountable to citizens of nation states, but more to global civil society.
Increasingly, scholars and activists are looking to the nation state for solutions. In The Work of Nations, as Robert Reich points out, the only governance mechanism we have left for corporate nationality is increasingly irrelevant (1992). Nation states, of course, vary markedly in their ability and/or desire either to confront and/or negotiate with global forces, corporations and finance. And within states, considerable variation exists in the degree to which democratic accountability exists to all or most people, who are never monolithically equal in political and power terms. Class, geography and gender are notable factors determining access to and/or experience with state power. Nevertheless, national politics is increasingly seen as a key arena for struggles against poverty and marginalization. Not surprisingly, good governance and the empowerment of citizens and groups so they can ensure responsible governance, is beginning to become a more central issue for some empowerment scholars and activists, including the contributors to this book (see also Stiles 2000; Staudt 1998).
At the same time, it is important to remember that states have historically institutionalized male interests (see, for example, Charlton et al. 1989; Parpart and Staudt 1989; Rai and Lievesley 1996). This is reflected in the small numbers of women in decision-making positions in state structures – a mere tenth or less of women legislators is the global norm (UNDP 1995; Staudt 1996). Such minority positioning often constrains women legislators from raising strategic issues for women. Challenges to this situation are being pursued at two levels. First, greater participation of women in national political bodies is argued for as part of the processes of democratization (Rai, this volume). Second, some call for mainstreaming gender in both national and global policy-making and institutional politics (see McBride-Stetson and Mazur 1995; Rai, 2002). Empowerment in this context depends upon the space women are able to create within political structures, as well as the issues they are able to raise (or not) in their own strategic interests. We need much more careful, historically specific analyses of women’s attempts to develop political strategies and networks that challenge male power structures and improve state responsiveness to women’s issues, both locally and nationally (Cockburn 1999). Globalizing issues of governance, as well as networking globally to challenge hegemonic institutional politics within the local/national space are also critically important elements in the struggles for women’s empowerment.
These debates and discussions raise a number of issues that need to be dealt with when considering empowerment, gender and development. One of the key issues underpinning any discussion of empowerment must be a clearer definition/understanding of power. While the authors in this book do not subscribe to a particular definition of power and empowerment, they do reject the simple dichotomy between those who have power over people, resources and institutions and those who do not (i.e. the powerless). They all consider the importance of language and meanings, and the need to think about identities and cultural practices when considering women’s empowerment. More or less explicitly, the chapters in this collection take the position that women’s empowerment requires understanding of the many ways that power can be understood and acted upon, and the importance of incorporating feminist insights into their analysis.
However, the authors approach the question of power in several ways. Kathy Staudt, for example, explores the way official institutions employ discourses of empowerment but often fail to translate them into action. Thus, women’s empowerment may have entered the discourse, but it has failed to offer women power over those institutions or power to demand fundamental change. She calls for collective political action, for power with others through politics, as a means for moving empowerment from rhetoric to action. Reena Patel demonstrates how women’s lack of economic and political power limits their power to use land legislation in order to gain power over one of the most critical resources in India, namely land. She believes women will never become empowered until they gain more control over this resource. Marella Bodur and Susan Franceschet highlight the potential empowerment emerging from women’s organizations, from the power gained by working with other women. Others focus on power within, on the need for individual empowerment, both of an emotional and material kind. Vandana Desai emphasizes the subtle strategies of informal politics, whereby women seek small but important changes in their personal lives. She points out that triumphs in personal power, power within, can lead to individual empowerment and ultimately to involvement in formal political activism, or power with and power to as well.
Some of the authors draw more explicitly on the feminist theoretical literature about the gendered nature of power. Josephine Lairap-Fonderson uses a Foucauldian framework to explore the empowerment potential (or not) of micro credit projects. While emphasizing the disciplinary and relational character of micro credit, particularly the constraints placed on borrowers through regulations and restrictions of lending institutions, she acknowledges its potential for resistance as well. Jane Parpart calls for integrating attention to discourse, knowledge and power into the thinking and methodology of participatory rural appraisal (PRA). Shaheen Sardar Ali reminds us that an insistence upon universal rights for women might not be in the best interests of Muslim women. As Muslim states, for example, are more apt to support demands for equity (to be equal within differences) than equality, which suggests sameness, women in these states need to take this into account when strategising about empowerment and rights. Thus, cultural practices, and disputes over meanings/discourses, are central for considering women’s em(power)ment. Legal instruments, even international legal instruments, that ignore this fact are no more apt to empower women than development projects and policies framed around Northern conceptions of gender and development.
Second, while the local is important as a focus for discussions on empowerment, the chapters in this book reflect our belief that the local is embedded in the global and national, and vice versa. The interconnectedness of the three levels provides a framework for our interrogation of empowerment, gender and development. The chapters take up this argument from different positions. Desai and Parpart focus on the local. Richey and Lairap-Fonderson evaluate the empowerment potential (or lack) of some national, but also local, development projects. Rai examines the potential of national political representation for women’s empowerment, while Franceschet and Bodur investigate the empowerment potential of women’s organizations within nation states. Staudt and Stromquist range widely across continents, but generally focus on relations between nations in their consideration of development institutions and education’s empowerment potential. Youngs, Gardiner Barber and Ali adopt a deliberately global perspective, framing their analysis of cyberspace, international migration and international legal covenants in the global/local context we live in. However, these chapters, and the others, connect their analyses to all three levels. The disciplining and disruptive power of national states is, for example, evident in Parpart’s chapter on PRA and in Desai’s on grassroots NGOs in Bombay. Rai’s chapter focuses on the ways in which national debates on women’s representations have been influenced by international and local political struggles and discourses. Youngs reminds us that cyberspace cannot be understood unless we remember that travelling in cyberspace requires technology that is situated in space and requires certain resources and expertise. Gardiner Barber traces the links between international global changes, national economic policies and the daily lived experiences and opportunities of Filipina women. Thus, the dynamic interconnectedness of the three levels is an essential component for evaluating women’s empowerment in this collection.
Third, the empowerment literature has focused on consciousness-raising and individual and group action/agency without perhaps paying enough attention to the ways in which institutional structures and politics frame, constrain and enable these activities. We believe the institutional, material and discursive framework within which individual and group agency can develop must be taken seriously. This does not mean that the process of implementing ‘empowerment’ policies and projects, and the agency involved, is less important. It does, however, point to the need to situate individual and group action/agency within the material, political and discursive structures in which it operates. Thus, the book calls for careful, historically situated analyses of women’s struggles to gain power in a world rarely of their own choosing.
All of the chapters take up this challenge, albeit often in somewhat different ways. Stromquist suggests that formal educational institutions do not offer women as much potential for empowerment as do autonomous women’s organizations committed to women’s empowerment. Thus, for her, participation and consciousness-raising are often more important than institutional structures for determining women’s agency. However, Rai’s study of women’s political representation points to the importance of working within institutional politics while remaining aware of the limitations inherent in working within male-dominated political bodies. Desai reminds us of the importance of individual struggles through informal politics, and the structural and cultural constraints within which these take place. The issue of cultural constraints and the impact of liberalizing economies on women’s options – political, economic and social – is illustrated in several chapters including those by Patel, Ali, Gardiner Barber and Lairap-Fonderson.
Finally, we see empowerment to be as much a process as an outcome. At times the two are indistinguishable; at others, outcome becomes part of the process itself, and at still others, the process is the outcome. Staudt, for example, focuses on specific outcomes of empowerment politics that can be documented by economic, budgetary and spatial indicators. Her chapter reminds us of the importance of seeking evidence of empowerment, both to keep development practitioners honest and to evaluate appropriate strategies for pursuing women’s strategic interests. Other chapters point to the difficulty of measuring women’s empowerment. Desai reminds us that subtle and often unexpected strategies have the potential but not the certainty of empowerment. On the other hand, chapters by Ali and Patel suggest that seemingly empowering legal instruments do not always guarantee women’s empowerment. Parpart suggests that participatory processes themselves need to be scrutinized and theorized if they are to be effective and transformative. Rai warns readers that the process of debates among women can lead to dangerous divisions within the women’s movement, and Parpart points out that the process of participation and voice is not always empowering. Thus, while conceptual clarity demands some distinction between process and outcome, and attempts to evaluate outcomes are important, the chapters in Rethinking Empowerment suggest that we need to see empowerment not simply as measurable or quantifiable. Indeed, both the process and supposed outcomes of empowerment are perhaps best seen as untidy and unpredictable rather than linear, inevitable and easily understood.
In conclusion, we believe these issues provide lenses for rethinking the concept and practice of empowerment. They offer a way to make the term and the practice of empowerment strategies for women more rigorous, effective and perhaps complex. Women’s groups, movements and feminist scholars would then be able to reflect upon the interconnectedness that the term requires if it is to be more than a ‘motherhood’ term. Rethinking Empowerment is thus a critique of the existing debates on empowerment as well as a contribution to the debates and practice on women’s strategizing for empowerment. We hope it will push the analysis of women’s empowerment in ways that both strengthen the concept and enhance attempts to operationalize women’s empowerment in an increasingly complex, global/local world.
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