Why ‘Women Empowerment’ doesn’t do it for some of us.

In Sub-Sahara Africa, an awakened wave of feminism is riding the tide and calling for more local ownership and amplification of ‘global south’ movements, specifically, recognition of prior efforts towards gender equality before the popular song of ‘women empowerment’ broke through.

There are voices and murmurs in the global south, calling for change in narrative; we are saying, the phrase ‘women empowerment’ does not work for us anymore, because it disregards the power that we already had, no matter how little, no matter how confined by patriarchal systems, no matter how contrived by social systems. It also seems to lean way too much on ‘micro enterprises’ for women..which is fine..We had to start somewhere and I suppose this does resonate with the original idea behind women economic empowerment. But why not ‘MACRO’?

The beauty of gender mainstreaming and interventions is they are ever changing to accommodate women’s needs, albeit from development policies that claim and demonstrate to have ‘woman’ at the center. The orgina concept of ‘women economic empowerment’ as Caroline Moser states (renowned gender analyst and scholar) can be traced back to ‘women in development theory’, which suggested that economic empowerment and political empowerment were the ideal interventions and approaches needed to integrate women in development.

Other theories of empowerment as presented by Barbara Solomo (1976,1985), Peter Berger and Richard Neuhaus (1977) and Julian Rappaport (1981) connect empowerment to individuals and community, calling on more ecological approaches in relation to empowerment and social situations.

However, all their theories leaned more towards social approaches and mediations that consider individual self autonomy, self determination, and the environments that allow them to exercise such. Over the decade, the concept of power has evolved to mean something that is both developed and acquired, either by self, or with help from others. (Staples, 1990).

Barbara Solomon (1976, 1985) emphasized empowerment as a method of social work with oppressed Afro-Americans. Peter Berger and Richard Neuhaus (1977) proposed empowerment as a way of improving the welfare services by means of mediating social institutions.

Julian Rappaport (1981) developed the concept theoretically and presented it as a world-view which mainly focuses on a social policy and an approach to the solution of social problems stemming from powerlessness. Now powerlessness according to who, we are yet to establish this.

The current lamentations can also be argued for with reflection on Amartya Sen’s Capabilities approach, (Sen, 1999), where the focus is on the individual’s capability to live a good life, and development means an enabling and conducive environment to exercise that capability.

So why ‘EMPOWERMENT’ when it alludes to global inequalities, I mean the term was first presented in Washington (yes same Washington D.C, the control tower for almost all global development) and when one digs deep; you will find that these terms were suggested by parties that were already in a position of power and therefore sustained this position, by re-distributing this power, all the while retaining their higher position.

Some might call this neo-liberal cynicism, however, I implore you to just for few seconds forget we are determined to modernize the global south, and take into consideration the very fact that we are actually achieving development through women, considering they make the largest group in informal economy which drives the central economy; “In South Asia, over 80 per cent of women in non-agricultural jobs are in informal employment; in sub-Saharan Africa, 74 per cent; and in Latin America and the Caribbean, 54 per cent”- UN Women

We need to take into consideration the local specific contexts, and acknowledge how they sustained their livelihoods, then look and work collectively to support them with the necessary interventions and tools to advance to better livelihoods. The process is advancement, if we include recognition of prior efforts and systems in the framework, not EMPOWERMENT in it’s true semantic form.

If empowermnet is a process and a product, as popularly defined, aren’t we further nurturing ‘who’ owns this power, specifically who holds autonomy on this process, and who is the producer and buyer of this product? How do we balance the dynamics behind these very processes of empowerment without addressing the autonomy on the whole exercise and who drives it?

The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres was recently quoted saying; “The central question of gender equality is a question of power” I had a ‘aha’ moment reading it, especially when he continued to say “Power is not given, power is taken”, adding that “we have to push back” against the resistance to change “because people do not like power being taken”.

So global south, who took our power from us, for us to need to be ‘empowered’?

Women, is it really true we need to be empowered? Not ‘supported to advance’? And if there are specific contexts like the economic and political empowerment that can be argued with empirical evidence from policies and laws, then why are we not referring to them as such and instead riding the wave of sloganeerism?

How have we survived with ‘women empowerment’ for all these years without addressing how patronizing the term itself is?

To continue singing this song of empowerment, is to accept the very rhetoric we are fighting against and the same systems we are working to dismantle, of the powerful and the powerless. This article aims to offer contestations to support why we should change the narrative in the development world from ‘empowerment’ to ‘advancement’.