Taking the power out of empowerment – an experiential account

This article traces the centuries-long evolution of the concept and practice of empowerment, its adoption by radical social movements, especially women's movements from the 1970s onwards, and its conversion, by the late 1990s, into a buzzword. Situating the analysis in the context of women's empowerment interventions in India, the article describes the dynamic of the depoliticisation and subversion of a process that challenged the deepest structures of social power. The ‘downsizing’ and constriction of the concept within state policy, the de-funding of genuine empowerment strategies on the ground, and the substitution of microfinance and political quotas for empowerment are examined and analysed.     

Understanding the Problem of Northeast India

The first wave of feminism in India was closely connected to electoral politics, while the second wave turned away from party politics. This resulted in a growing marginalization of feminist concerns from the public agenda. There is a strong relationship between movement success and electoral engagement. This article reviews the history of feminist interventions in electoral politics and demonstrates that early victories for women depended on their participation in party politics. I argue that the creation of the autonomous women's movement has had a diminishing effect on women's progress in recent years. A number of paths remain available to the women's movement to engage with political parties and political leaders. Staying outside the electoral arena has not served Indian feminism well.     

Women's empowerment in challenging environments: a case study from Balochistan

This article offers strategies for women's empowerment in conservative, tribal, and religious environments, based on an innovative programme in Pakistan. Mainstreaming Gender and Development (MGD) encouraged participants to build on their communities' strengths, minimised resistance among families and communities by including them in the development process, and succeeded in building a cadre of women activists. Drawing on its experience, the author questions the importance of collective action, suggests that the selection of participants should be based on aptitude rather than socio-economic status, and highlights the potential for women's empowerment in challenging environments.     

Separate or equal? The emergence of an all‐female group in Norway's rightist underground

This article discusses the importance of separate women's organizations in militant groups of the far right. The analysis suggests that the existence of a separate women's group has not only enhanced the respect the members feel for themselves and each other, but has been successful in eliciting greater respect from their male counterparts, resulting in the women receiving greater responsibility in the organization. The article is based on participant observations and on interviews with activists in the militant far‐right underground in Norway. It assumes that the need for separate women's organizations in the rightist underground reflects a pre‐existing dissatisfaction with conditions and opportunities for females in a highly male‐dominated environment.     

Women's empowerment revisited: a case study from Bangladesh

This article explores the changing dimensions of women's empowerment over time in three Bangladesh villages where one of the authors has been conducting research since 1991. The article discusses theoretical issues related to the measurement of women's empowerment, and describes findings from a recent study in the villages exploring the current salience of indicators developed for a 1992 survey. In the article we discuss the types of social, economic, and political change that affect the measurement of women's empowerment; propose and explain a new set of indicators for the rural Bangladesh setting; and discuss implications for measuring women's empowerment in other settings.     

Democracy assistance and women's political empowerment in post-conflict countries

Democracy promoters around the world cling to the hope that assistance given to civil society organizations decreases the risk of civil war and will lead to democracy in post-conflict societies. A particularly promising segment of civil society in peacebuilding is women. Inspired by Welzel and Inglehart's “human empowerment: path to democracy” this study places democracy assistance to women in a broader mechanism which forms a theoretical foundation of this study. The case of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the author's insights from the fieldwork demonstrate that in order to assess the impact of democracy assistance on women's political empowerment the comprehensive women's political empowerment mechanism should be employed. The statistical examination, however, reveals that women's political activism is largely the function of legal empowerment and a country's political and socio-economic characteristics. The study also shows the limitations of current impact evaluation methodologies, and suggests better evaluation tools.     

Engendering local democracy: The impact of quotas for women in India's panchayats

In 1992, India's Parliament enacted two constitutional amendments that sought to democratize local governance and engender it through quota-based reservations for women. This article asks whether participation in these institutions has enabled women to articulate and advance their interests. To evaluate this, the article deploys the distinction in feminist literature between strategic and practical gender interests. Through a survey of a wide range of studies conducted in different parts of India it points to the constraints, both of institutional design as well as of social inequalities of gender and caste, that inhibit a fuller and more effective participation by women. There is nevertheless evidence to suggest that the quotas have enabled women to address their practical gender needs and interests, even if the articulation and realization of strategic interests is moving at a somewhat slower pace.     

Developing indicators to assess women's empowerment in Vietnam

From mid‐1999 to mid‐2001, the authors carried out a qualitative study in rural Vietnam to explore relationships between gender equity and reproductive health. One of the study's objectives was to develop culturally appropriate indicators of women's empowerment, specific to the Vietnamese context. This paper describes the process of developing, testing, and refining the empowerment indicators, presents some of the findings, and discusses the methodological challenges that need to be addressed. The paper concludes by recommending a set of Vietnamspecific domains for assessing women's empowerment in the socio‐economic sphere as well as in reproductive health.     

Women's political participation in Greece since the fall of the Colonels: From democratic struggle to incorporation by the party‐state?

This article examines the changing nature of women's political participation in Greece and argues that the period since 1974 has seen a shift from political participation through women's involvement in popular democratic struggles to the increasing incorporation of the women's movement by the Greek ‘party‐state’. From 1967–74 Greece lived under the repressive dictatorship of the Colonels. Yet Greece now enjoys some of the most progressive legislation in Europe in the area of equality between the sexes. Most of the demands of the Greek women's movement of the late 1970s were already translated into public policy provisions by the 1980s.

Women's issues came to be accepted on to the political agenda in Greece in part as a result of women's participation in national struggles for liberation and democracy through which they developed close links with the parties of the Left. In the short term, collaboration with the newly formed or newly liberated parties of the Left brought important rewards for the women's organizations and allowed women a voice in Greek politics for the first time. However, it is argued that collaboration has also had its costs ‐ not least of which has been the linkage of progress on women's issues with the spoils of political office.     

Developing policy on integration and re/construction in Kosova

The Gender Audit (GA) and associated reports and reviews drawn upon in this article enable an evaluation of how far the intervention processes at work in Kosova since 1999 have been inclusive of gender analysis and supportive of women's and girls' needs and interests. This assessment considers the strengths and drawbacks of various attempts to use and implement gender-sensitive projects. The GA was designed to support the emerging feminist reconstructive politics in Kosova. Its findings and recommendations tackle aspects of empowerment, equity, and opportunities, outlining some developments from community activism as well as outcomes of the international administration. By considering developments over a two-year period, it is possible to place issues of equity and opportunities in the context of change over time, with change at local and national levels linked with developing international dialogues. The article analyses local work undertaken by the Kosova Women's Network to overcome violence against women in war and domestic peace, and reviews international work engaged in by the Kosovo [sic] Women's Initiative (KWI). Many Kosovar women (of all ethnicities) do fully acknowledge their community membership, and recognise the risks involved in talking across their differences to achieve everyday security and reconciliation. International reports and reviews such as those produced in 2002 by the UN Secretary-General and UNIFEM on women, war, peace, and security, as well as the review of the KWI, allow an assessment of how dialogues are changing and what the potential impact of such change might be on policy development and implementation.     

The problem of gender quotas: women's representatives on Timor-Leste's suku councils

This article examines the experiences of women occupying reserved seats on the suku councils of Timor-Leste (each of which represents a number of small villages). The limited political participation of these women is often ascribed to patriarchal ideas within rural areas, and the need for capacity development. This article argues, however, that there are further structural issues at play, whereby the interaction between traditional and modern governance makes it difficult for women occupying reserved seats to make their mark. While gender quotas can be a useful tool to encourage women's political participation, these structural issues need to be recognised and addressed in order to truly empower women.     

Democracy and the Recasting of Caste in India

The three books under review offer a fascinating account of how the processes of democracy and the practices of the modern Indian state have refashioned caste as an important feature of social stratification and self-definition. But the implication of the recasting of caste varies in the three accounts. According to Zoya Hasan, caste is an important marker of socio-economic backwardness and the policies of affirmative action that are based on this disadvantage should be extended to minorities. For Lucia Michelutti, electoral politics has refashioned caste into ethnic groups. The ethnicization of caste is premised on the horizontal solidarities of fictive kin groups. For Anupama Rao, the politics of dalit emacipation from caste atrocities has paradoxically exposed dalits to further acts of violence. Together, these books offer a compelling account of the formation of political subjects in modern India.     

印度种姓政治:历史、现状和未来——以北方邦为例

种姓政治深刻影响着印度国内政治。印度人口最多的北方邦是全印种姓政治最为典型的邦之一,是多支低种姓群众运动的发源地,产生了两个政治势力强大的种姓政党——大众社会党和社会主义党。种姓政治在北方邦一个多世纪的发展和演变大体可以分为发端期、成形期、强盛期和式微期四个阶段。种姓政治的发展有其内在局限性,加之印度人民党国族认同理念迅速扩张,种姓政治进入了衰退状态,但种姓领袖及其派系拥有的政治能量仍然不可小觑。     

Democratization and Women's Legislative Representation in Sub-Saharan Africa

The recent transition toward democracy in the third world and the former communist states has reopened the debate on the effect of democratization on women's parliamentary representation. While some researchers envisioned unprecedented opportunities for women's entry into national parliaments, others showed that democratization actually decreased women's representation in parliaments. Although the bulk of literature praises the recent political change toward democracy in Africa and analyses the internal and the external factors of this change, very little attention has been given to the effect of this change on women, in specific, women's legislative representation. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to examine the effect of the recent democratization on women's legislative representation in Africa. Cases are sub-Saharan African countries that have experienced multiparty legislative elections between 1990 and 1999. The study found that democratization overall has decreased women's representation in parliament. The countries that have proportional representation systems tend to have higher women's representation in parliament than the countries with majority or plurality systems. Gender quotas appear to improve women's legislative representation, but are practiced only by a small number of countries.     

Customary and contemporary resources for women's empowerment in Bangladesh

In Bangladesh, dramatic social and economic changes are transforming historical forms of patriarchy with various impacts on pathways to women's empowerment. We hypothesised contemporary resources would be more strongly associated with women's empowerment, as reflected in their influence in family decisions. In cross-sectional analysis, we found the contemporary resources of employment and membership in NGOs were most strongly and consistently associated with women's influence in family decisions. Education was only modestly associated, as were customary resources, including age and fertility. Programmatic efforts to enhance women's empowerment should consider the rapidly changing environment and the importance of women's economic participation.     

Lions,Tigers, and Freedom Birds: How and Why the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam Employs Women

This article examines how and why the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) integrated women, highlighting themes common to women's participation in militant groups such as women's unique propaganda value and cultural limits on recruiting women and employing them in political violence.     

“I know! I live here”: poor women and the work of empowerment

To trace the effects of empowerment programmes in the Global South, attention needs to be focused on the everyday practices of frontline staff, or fieldworkers, who convey empowerment ideas and practices at the grassroots. This is especially critical when fieldworkers work in the marginalised communities where they also live. Instead of looking outward towards a programme’s outcomes, this article turns inward to examine the impact of women fieldworkers’ dual experiences of development on their decisions and practices in the field. The ethnography of women fieldworkers in a government-led women’s empowerment programme for the poor in Delhi, India reveals the uneasy relationship of women’s empowerment to the larger contradictory development paradigm that they work within. Fieldworkers used their experiences as poor women to meet programme quotas, while also side-lining social change in favour of shielding clients from ineffective programme activities.     

Who Speaks for Women? Print Media Portrayals of Feminist and Conservative Women's Advocacy

Feminists have frequently accused media outlets of not giving them enough coverage and/or portraying them negatively. Conversely, conservative women have argued that media suffer from liberal biases. While some studies have addressed the larger question of media and ideological prejudices, none have examined how media report women's activism in comparative terms. Since feminist and conservative women's organizations vie with one another over who represents women's interests, how media portray them has implications for how well they achieve this goal. Using data gathered from four major national newspapers, this study analyzes how print journalists depict feminist and conservative women's activism over a 14-year span. In so doing, it provides information about frequency of media coverage, as well as how advocates are labeled, on which issues they are getting visibility, and whether or not media present feminist and conservative women's organizations as being in direct conflict with each other. Implications for understanding women's political efforts, broadly speaking, are also explored.     

Empowerment boom or bust? Assessing women's post-conflict empowerment initiatives

Over the past decade, the term ‘empowerment’ has been generously employed and woefully ill-defined. In particular, women's empowerment has been embraced by such a vast number of development actors that it appears to be a unifying mission within development. Despite the boom in women's empowerment initiatives, there remains little critical analysis of the use of empowerment in general, and the perceived success or failures of specific empowerment initiatives. Using the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration process in Sierra Leone as a case study, this paper examines how reintegration was described as a source of empowerment for women. Drawing from interviews and analysis of related policy discourses, it is argued that, rather than representing a radical shift in development approaches towards more inclusive and representative policies, empowerment projects are shaped by neoliberal ideas such as individualism, responsibility and economic order and carry implicit, gendered and disciplining messages about appropriate social behaviour.