Progress on women’s empowerment: From technical fixes to political action

What progress has been made in women’s empowerment and what factors have enabled this? This paper looks at the structural causes of women’s oppression and lack of power. It examines empowerment, and the programme-related implications of its various interpretations. The paper also provides an overview of the main factors that have enabled women and their allies to challenge unjust power relations and considers how the concept of empowerment can be operationalised, and how progress might be identified and measured. It concludes by reflecting on how international actors can most effectively support women’s empowerment.

Key findings:

Women’s empowerment is a process of personal and social change through which women gain power, meaningful choices and control over their lives. It is a multi-dimensional process that involves transforming ideas, norms, relationships and structures of resource and power allocation. Women are the agents of their empowerment. Empowerment is therefore not something that can be done for or to women, or indeed for or to anyone. Empowerment requires changes in power and the power structures and relations that deny women choice in different spheres of their lives. Crucially, empowerment also involves women’s active involvement and subjective assessment of whether they have more power and choice. Processes of empowerment occur in concrete political, economic and social settings in which women face violence, domination and the exercise of other forms of discriminatory power. These structures are subject to change through individual and collective action by women (and men), but gender hierarchies are remarkably resilient, and resistance takes many forms – including inside donor organisations.

There are many pathways to women’s empowerment but important enabling conditions include women’s collective action, constitutional and legal reform, social and economic policy measures, and changes in socio-cultural norms. In thinking about the pathways to women’s empowerment in practice, it is important to avoid unfounded generalisations within or across locations, groups of women or dimensions of empowerment.

Recommendations to international actors

To contribute to progress on women’s empowerment, the international community must support the political actions of women and their allies to change gender and other power hierarchies. While it is the people living in particular communities and societies that drive and sustain changes to patriarchal and other exclusionary social norms, international ideas, assistance and solidarity are an important part of the story of progress on women’s empowerment.

Support needs to focus on contributing to locally driven processes. This can involve supporting local capabilities, including women’s organisational and logistical needs, their associative capacity, and their political skills for negotiation and strategic coalition building (individually and collectively). Critically, heeding to the demands of local women and not importing externally driven agendas and priorities will limit the scope for harmful unintended consequences. Working to maximise opportunities and cross-fertilisation across sectors can result in the ‘multiplier empowerment effects’ of different programmes and initiatives. This means investing in understanding how different sectoral programmes (including where gender equality is not the primary objective) can reinforce the potential for women’s empowerment (or, conversely, undermine it).

Summary