1. University of Maryland
Women’s Empowerment and Education: Linking knowledge to transformative action
Nelly P. Stromquist
College of Education
University of Maryland
August 2017

2. Global gender policies
Gender policies—among the oldest global policies.
Women’s empowerment is a subset of gender policies.
The concept of women’s empowerment has now become an object of universal recognition.
Women’s empowerment figured explicitly as a fundamental element of policies adopted by IDAs. It appears as Goal 5 of the SDGs: “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.” A continuation of EFA and MDG policies.
The concept is much more used in the women’s movement and among funding agencies than in the academic world.

3. Women’s empowerment—a brief historical account
The concept first appeared in a book by Gita Sen and Caren Grown (1987).
Their ideas received international attention first at the Copenhagen Summit on Social Development (March 1995), then at the Fourth World Women’s Conference in Beijing (September 1995).
The Fifth International Conference on Adult Education in Hamburg (July 1997) introduced the reference to women’s empowerment in the context of adult education.
Now it is firmly embedded in global policies. The question is its definition and application.

4. Three main exponents of empowerment
Amartya Sen: Empowerment is “the acquisition by women of agency and voice.” Introduces the concepts of capabilities, functionings, and agency.
Martha Nussbaum: Calls attention to the need to identify concrete capabilities.
Naila Kabeer: “The expansion of women’s ability to make strategic choices in a context where this ability was previously denied to them.”
Implicit challenge: how to recognize crucial barriers and move from individual to collective voice and action.

5. A revisited concept and theory
A concept intimately related to a theory of change through social emancipation. Defined as: the set of knowledge, skills, and conditions that women must possess in order to understand their world and act upon it.
--Requires strong protagonist role by women themselves.
--Places great importance on collective agency.
--Identifies the interplay micro-macro and private-public spheres.
A theory based not on values but on empirical findings.
Empowerment: Four key and interlocking dimensions:
Economic: Some measure of financial autonomy;
Political: Ability to be represented or represent oneself at various venues of decision-making, including the home;
Knowledge: Awareness of one’s reality, including possibilities of and obstacles to women’s equality;
Psychological: The sense that one’s self has value, can act, and deserves a good and fair existence.

6. ECONOMIC
POLITICAL
PSYCHO-
LOGICAL
KNOWLEDGE

7. The economic dimension
Women’s advancement affected at two levels: a) national economic context, b) personal context: women’s access to economic resources in their own lives and households.
Women’s private sphere is affected by national level of industrialization (infrastructure: water, electricity, roads). Fertility rates also affected by industrial level (access to contraceptives), and thus women’s control over their bodies.
Strong correlation between economic development and women’s rights.
Women with access to independent income can negotiate conditions at home better than those who are wives and mothers only.
Critical importance of considering macro and micro variables within the
economic dimension of women’s empowerment.

8. The political dimension
Also two levels: the macro level dealing with voting and right to run for public office, and the micro level dealing with decision-making within the household.
Political empowerment at the micro level is both crucial and highly contested. It requires access to and participation in groups, organizations, movements, and social networks.
Women-led NGOs: A major counterweight to weak gender responses by the state. Many operate at local levels and are substantial sources for multidimensional provision of empowerment.
Immense need to redefine the political to include the “private” world.
It analyzes sources of inequality, injustice, and domination that shape society, with the ultimate purpose of helping us or others become free from such conditions. This is very clear in the arguments proposed by Habermas and Freire.

9. Micro/household empowerment
Why the household level?
(1) Domestic violence is the most pervasive act of domination by men over women;
(2) unremunerated women’s work at home creates financial and psychological dependence on male partners;
(3) time constraints at home severely shape women’s availability for economic and political engagement;
(4) women’s control over their bodies (particularly their decision to regulate their fertility) is implemented in the private sphere.
Dynamic relations exist between household work and work outside the home. Unremunerated work is not considered important in neoliberal regime. Processes within the household thus go unattended in public policy. 
“The gender division of labor between women and men and the differential use of time is a fundamental factor for the economic, social and political subordination of women” (ECLAC, 2010).
Micro-political conditions are extremely resistant to modification.

10. The knowledge dimension
To develop agency and to be effective agents, women need to be informed and know their social environments well.
Knowledge empowerment through schooling.
Gender-sensitive curriculum: sex education, domestic violence, early and forced marriage, childcare and household management, and an overall understanding of how gender ideologies (patriarchal norms and practices) shape everyday life.
Provision of a girl-friendly educational experience: elimination of sexual harassment and incentives to seek higher levels of education.
Both elements need intense and recurrent teacher/administrative training in gender-responsive practices.
Knowledge empowerment through adult education.
Gender-awareness programs: for all women, regardless of social class. Women must relearn so that feelings of inferiority and incapacity are eliminated.
To be sure, consent is not based solely upon the production of a dominant discourse. For Gramsci himself, hegemony was based on the broad acceptance of ideas that were supported by material resources and institutions. In other words, economic conditions play a key role in the production of truth.

11. The psychological dimension
Women need to have a strong self-esteem and to develop self-assertiveness to press for change.
These attributes are acquired through experiences of collective life, joint efforts, and subsequent awareness of successes in conducting those actions.  
The potential of the local space: small, closer to home, and allows greater flexibility for agenda-setting and participation.
Action at the local level enables local NGOs led by women to emerge and gain the experience that improves performance over time.
The psychological dimension is more diffuse than the other dimensions but central to the solidification and sustainability of empowerment.
A Latin America contribution is the “territorial development approach” (EDT). The growing importance of EDT is linked to processes of decentralization, now attempted in most Latin American countries. 

12. Economic, political, knowledge, and psychological dimensions of empowerment

13. INTERNATIONAL ACTORS —Who are they?
Transnational
Women’s
Movement
Bilateral
Development
Agencies UN
System
Empowerment Policies
IFIs and
Supranational Organizations
For-profit
Entrepreneurs
Consultant
Networks
Philanthropic
Organizations

14. Women’s empowerment policies in IDAs
Global policies on gender do not engage in examination of cause-effect relationships or the interconnection of factors preventing the acquisition of power and status by women.
The lack of a clear definition of empowerment does not facilitate policy design as it becomes unclear what are core elements to support and key processes to put into action.
In practice, IDAs tend to see gender as “women” and “girls.” And women as “mothers.”
Decentralization procedures by IDAs compound the possibility of very loose understandings of what women’s empowerment entails.

15. Contradiction between discourse and theory
International development agencies explicitly invoke the notion of empowerment. In the recent past, OECD and UNDP leaders have stated that investing in women is “the breakthrough strategy” for achieving development.
Yet, the concept remains either partial, or under-elaborated, or poorly defined, and linkages between macro and micro conditions affecting women are seldom made.
There have been advances in the recognition of agency—but this is much more at the individual than the collective level.
Critical actors such as women-led NGOs are not sufficiently identified as fundamental stakeholders; these groups receive less than 2% of the funds assigned to gender equality and women’s empowerment.

16. Some reflections on global policies
Global policies are positive when they introduce gender-transformative values/principles not encouraged by traditional cultures.
Global policies on women’s empowerment come at a high price: simplification of concept, fragmentation of support, and avoidance of controversial action.