Women Power – The Power of Raising
Women are powerful forces in social change, often leading their communities and countries in the fight for equality and freedom. Their participation in democratic governance is essential for a healthy, fair and sustainable society. But while women have made progress towards gender parity in many areas, there is still a long way to go before they are represented equally in positions of power and leadership.
In many parts of the world, traditional gender roles continue to limit women power opportunities and restrict their rights. They can be subject to discriminatory laws and practices; they may have limited access to education, employment or health care; and they are at risk of violence in their homes, workplaces and communities.
Yet the rise of women power and ideologies has opened up a new era for women’s rights. Feminist leaders, such as Betty Friedan, have campaigned against discrimination and inequality in their governments; and government laws have passed equal-rights acts that protect women’s rights to education and work.
Women Power – The Power of Raising Your Voice for the Right
Today, the concept of women’s empowerment is an important focus of mainstream development concerns. It is used to frame programmes that aim to address issues of gender inequalities, primarily through the creation of ‘instrumental gains’–a term rooted in early empowerment work and conceived as an iterative process of transforming power relations (Rowlands, 1997; Batliwala, 2007).
But while these instrumental gains have brought significant change to women’s lives, they also often mask the journeys that women are travelling on their way to achieving greater freedom and agency. These pathways, like all journeys, require planning and preparation and can be steep and winding.
Nevertheless, many pathways do lead to success. The case studies in this article show that women’s individual and collective journeys are facilitated by a range of factors: empowered ‘ingredients’ such as feminist leadership, training initiatives that build critical consciousness and the capacity for collective action; and economic elements that enable women to create changes in their everyday relationships and claim rights in their economic activities.
The most successful of these empowering ingredients are often the result of generating transformational relationships between women, including those between leaders and women on the ground. These relationships help to build solidarity and trust, which can then be harnessed by groups of women working together for positive social change.
In the case of Chapeu de Palha Mulher, an initiative in Brazil that seeks to channel public policies through the households of low-income women without instrumentalizing them, this was a crucial step in changing social norms and addressing the root causes of women’s exclusion. It has helped tens of thousands of women gain access to the vocational training and education they need to get better jobs and increase their incomes.
The most dramatic revolutions in the past 50 years have usually produced profound social changes that are difficult to understand and often involve high levels of friction. The economic empowerment of women across the rich world is a remarkable example. It has swept millions of people out of poverty and taken control of their own lives. But the journey to achieving this freedom has been fraught with obstacles, which women have had to overcome in a wide variety of ways. They have needed to be empowered to think differently about their situations, their social worlds and their relationships and horizons, and to find the courage to take risks and act in ways that were previously unthinkable.
