Introduction: Negotiating Empowerment

Abstract

This introductory article draws out some of the dimensions and dilemmas around women's empowerment that are highlighted in the articles in this IDS Bulletin: the choices, the negotiations, the narratives and above all, the context of women's lived experience. In doing so, we show that empowerment is a complex process that requires more than the quick and easy solutions often offered by development agencies. Much of the significant change happening in women's lives takes place outside of the range of these conventional interventions. In conclusion, we suggest that for development agencies to really support women's empowerment requires greater engagement with changing structures rather than accommodating women within the inequitable existing order, and a much deeper understanding of what makes change happen in their lives.

School, sexuality and problematic girlhoods: reframing ‘empowerment’ discourse

“…Cornwall and Edwards criticise development agencies for frequently conceptualising and involving women in ways that reduce their empowerment to such outputs. 16 They argue that such approaches ignore how the specific contexts of women's lives may impact upon the effectiveness of strategies being used and risk marginalising less privileged women.…”

Escaping the Mythical Beast: Gender Mainstreaming Reconceptualised

“…It is in this context that empowerment of women has increasingly been framed in business case terms. In fact, ‘women's empowerment is heralded in today's development circles as a means that can produce extraordinary ends’ (Cornwall and Edwards, : 1). The clip The Girl Effect of the Nike Foundation illustrates this by arguing that the solution to the problems the world is facing is ‘a girl’, who, after having received education and a loan, will ‘make the whole world better off’ and ‘change the course of history’ by ending poverty and war, and creating peace, stability, growth and so on (http://www.girleffect.org) (Chant and Sweetman, : 520).…”

“…This strand of theorizing rather explores how agency consists of simultaneously upholding as well as subverting norms and normality. Agency is then as much about compliance as it is about resistance (for instance Cornwall and Edwards, ; Eyben, ; Davids, , van Eerdewijk, ). With such an understanding of agency, Davids et al .…”

Reframing Digital Storytelling as Co-creative

“…As an overall institution, Pathways seeks to complicate neoliberal understandings of women's 'empowerment' that equate power with money and see it as something that can be achieved as a product of linear inputs and outcomes. Viewing this as a reductionist model, Pathways conceptualises empowerment as a complex process of making choices for one's self to bring about transformation and changing the conditions under which those choices are taken (Cornwall and Edwards 2010). The DST project sought to explore the influence of various factors that women face in the process of feeling empowered and the resulting dilemmas, choices, negotiations, and contexts.…”