Women and Empowerment: Illustrations from the Third World (Women's Studies at York Series)

The authors in this volume address the questions 'What is empowerment?' Is it power over resources? Is it the ability to create 'effective demand'? Is it about the ability to make choices? Is it about access to resources and how they are controlled, politically, economically, by NGOs, by political parties, by the state? Do political parties facilitate or do they channel energies away from empowerment? They evaluate how in different circumstances different political agents have been seen as provider of resources. This volume widens the debate on empowerment to balance different experiences of empowerment and evaluate the role played by agency, donors, and recipients. The question is, "Who empowers whom?" The term itself has been critically evaluated and its definition in terms of the ability of an individual to maximize her utility has been challenged by the authors. Using case studies from Latin America, South East Asia and the Middle East, the authors note the diversity of political and economic measures that have been introduced in the name of empowerment. They demonstrate that at times too much emphasis has been placed on the individual and her particular circumstances. This in turn has undermined communal activities and goals. Empowered women are not necessarily those women who wish to or can separate their personal and familial needs. At other times the very existence of an international empowerment agenda has proved extremely useful to isolated groups engaged in difficult political negotiations with the state. The volume concludes that it is far too difficult to provide a final evaluation of the impact of the diverse empowerment policies, but what is well worth noting is the unintended as well as the planned outcomes of some of the policies concerned. Front Matter....Pages i-xi Introduction: Women and Empowerment — Some Illustrative Studies....Pages 1-10 A Word of the Times, but What Does it Mean? Empowerment in the Discourse and Practice of Development....Pages 11-34 Fruits of Burden–The Organisation of Women Temporary Workers in Chilean Agribusiness....Pages 35-56 Gender and Rural-Urban Migration in China....Pages 57-66 The Grameen Bank Experiment: Empowerment of Women through Credit....Pages 67-85 Localities of Power: Gender, Parties and Democracy in Chile and Brazil....Pages 86-109 The Syrian Woman: Reality and Aspiration....Pages 110-116 ‘Disempowerment’ and the Politics of Civil Liberties for Iranian Women....Pages 117-133 Violence in Intimate Relationships: A Research Project in India....Pages 134-154 Engendering the Analysis of Conflict: A Southern Perspective....Pages 155-163 Women Dying, Women Working: Disempowerment in British India....Pages 164-188 Assessing the Impact: NGOs and Empowerment....Pages 189-209 Back Matter....Pages 210-214 Deals with the meaning of empowerment in the discourse and practice of development. Presents examples from Asian and South American countries Empowerment has become rather a buzz word for the 1990s.