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This article provides information about “How Empowering Women is an Effort towards Development of Women?”:
Very closely connected with the issue of women’s development is the question of women’s empowerment. But what does empowerment mean and how can development bring it about? The term is contentious, yet it is important not to see it equivalent to greater participation of women in economic activities for economic activities do not always improve women’s conditions and often add extra work burden on her.
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The term empowerment has within it the highly contentious concept of power which is understood differently by different people. In an article, “What is Empowerment”, Jo Rowlands makes a distinction between “power over” and “power to”, the first implying that some people have power or control over others, hence an instrument of domination and the second as a generative power, a power to stimulate, to lead without a conflict of interests, a power that does not seek to dominate or subordinate, rather a power that can resist and challenge the coercive intentions of “power over”.
Empowerment generally is defined as bringing women from outside the decision-making process into it such that they have access to political structures and decision-making, to markets and income and more generally to a state where they are able to maximise opportunities without constraints of the family, community or -the state.
A feminist definition of empowerment however is broader for it demands a consciousness of one’s own interests and how they relate to the interests of others so that decision-making is based on knowledge of self and others and an assessment of ability to exert influence. Empowerment in the feminist sense would imply a realisation of the “power over” as well as the “power to” resist, negotiate and change.
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The ability to act and exert influence thus requires the empowered to understand internalised oppression as well as the dynamics of oppression such that power is not given or received, rather it comes from within. Empowerment is thus a process; and development itself should not be confused as empowerment. In some of the policies of the State, as it has been pointed out, the goal of development should be women’s empowerment. This implies that women gain in self-confidence and take charge of creating for themselves the conditions that will facilitate the maximisation of their human abilities and potentialities.