Women's empowerment: What works and why?

Revisiting foundational feminist work on the concept of empowerment from the 1980s and 1990s, this paper draws on the findings of a multi-country research programme, 'Pathways of Women's Empowerment', to explore pathways of positive change in women's lives, in diverse contexts, and to draw together some lessons for policy and practice. It begins with an account of women's empowerment in development, tracing some key ideas that have shaped feminist engagement with empowerment in theory and practice. It then introduces the Pathways programme and its methodological approach, before turning to each of Pathways' themes, exploring key findings from our research and highlighting examples of 'what works'. It goes on to narrate a series of stories of change that illustrate some of the dynamics and dimensions of change identified in our key conclusions. Drawing out the principal lessons, the paper concludes with reflections on implications for development policy and practice

The Role of Social and Political Action in Advancing Women’s Rights, Empowerment, and Accountability to Women

Through the lens of four case studies focused on women’s political participation (Palestine and Sierra Leone), and the passage of domestic violence law (Brazil and South Africa), this paper looks at the role of social and political action in advancing women’s rights. In so doing, the paper assesses how research in fragile and conflict-affected settings might be framed to examine the ways in which social and political action can effect change for women in these contexts. The paper explores change at multiple levels: within, below and beyond the state. It highlights the role of women’s organisations within accountability: in both ensuring delivery on commitments, and tracking their subsequent effective implementation. In conclusion, the paper underlines the importance of understanding the political landscape in which social and political actors operate as a constantly shifting field of action, both contextually and temporally, in which critical junctures aligning particular strategies, tactics, and actors can occur to produce politically meaningful gains. It is in the learning from these junctures on what worked and how, that research can contribute to making positive change in the future.UK Department for International Developmen

Addressing the preconditions: women's rights and development

‘Gender equality’ may have made it into the language of mainstream development. But in most parts of the world, inequalities between women and men in the workplace, in political institutions and in the home have proven exasperatingly persistent. For all the valiant efforts that have been made, gender mainstreaming has largely failed live up to its promises. The dilution and depoliticization of the ‘gender agenda’ as it has come to be taken up by development institutions calls for more attention to be paid to what it takes to make a difference to women’s lives. The human rights framework offers an invaluable analytical tool with which to think about what can be done to advance the realization of women’s rights. Its emphasis on the indivisibility, integrality and interdependence of human rights draws attention to the interconnections between different spheres of women’s lives. This paper highlights two ‘entry-level’ rights - women’s rights over their bodies and the right to participate in decisions that affect their lives - which are, it is argued, are fundamental to all other rights. It suggests that greater attention needs to be given to measures that enable women to realise these rights as preconditions for equitable development

Towards a Pedagogy for the Powerful

Development organisations have learnt to talk the talk on ‘gender’. But in many if not most organisations male privilege and patriarchal attitudes and behaviour persist. This article explores techniques that can be used to make visible some of the dynamics of gendered power in organisations, as part of strategies for changing the scene in the everyday work settings in which these dynamics create obstacles for the enjoyment of greater equality and respect. It draws on anthropological and participatory methods borrowed, adapted and developed in a range of contexts, from action research on organisational culture to the delivery of ‘gender training’. Framed by bell hooks’ observation that patriarchy is a pernicious and life-threatening social disease that affects us all, the article offers some reflections on interventions aimed at changing the gender order

Introduction: New Democratic Spaces? The Politics and Dynamics of Institutionalised Participation

Across the world, as new democratic experiments meet withand transformolder forms of governance, political space for public engagement in governance appears to be widening. A renewed concern with rights, power and difference in debates about participation in development has focused greater attention on the institutions at the interface between publics, providers and policy makers. Some see in them exciting prospects for the practice of more vibrant and deliberative democracy (Fung and Wright 2003; Gaventa, forthcoming).Others raise concerns about them as forms of co-option, and as absorbing, neutralising and deflecting social energy from other forms of political participation (Taylor 1998). The title of this Bulletin reflects some of their ambiguities as arenas that may be neither new nor democratic, but at the same time appear to hold promise for renewing and deepening democracy. Through a series of case studies from a range of political and cultural contexts – Brazil, India, Bangladesh,Mexico, South Africa, England and the United States of America, contributors to this Bulletin explore the interfaces between different forms of public engagement. Their studies engage with questions about representation, inclusion and voice, about the political efficacy of citizen engagement as well as the viability of these new arenas as political institutions. Read together, they serve to emphasise the historical, cultural and political embeddedness of the institutions and actors that constitute spaces for participation

Changing ideals in a donor organisation : 'participation' in Sida

Development buzzwords shelter diverse and often divergent strands of meaning and practice, lending an air of credibility and currency to the policies of the agencies that espouse them. Tracing the trajectory of one of these buzzwords, ‘participation’, in Swedish development cooperation, this paper seeks to unpack some of those diverse meanings and lend form to some of those divergent practices. It weaves together institutional ethnography with oral history and textual analysis, fortified by insights from a unique action research initiative on participation. This innovative process brought together desk officers from across the institution in a participatory learning group that met for the best part of a year to explore the challenge of institutionalising participation in Sida. The paper tells the tale of efforts to promote and negotiate participation in a changing external and institutional environment. It begins in a time when the term had not yet gained currency but in which the practice of Swedish development cooperation resonated with many of the ideals that were associated with popular participation. It goes on to chart the rise of ‘popular participation’ (folkligt deltagende) and other variants, community participation, beneficiary participation, stakeholder participation and civil society participation, as Swedish development cooperation came to be influenced by the discourses and practices of bilateral and multilateral development institutions. Pursuing the trajectory of participation into an era in which other buzzwords – harmonisation, ownership and accountability – have taken precedence, it reflects on the paradoxes of efforts to institutionalise ideals within development bureaucracies as they grapple with the opportunities, challenges and contradictions of the Paris Agenda and the reconfiguration of the business of aid. Keywords: participation; history of development; organisational change; development cooperation; development policy

How to find out what’s really going on: understanding impact through participatory process evaluation

This article considers the contribution participatory process evaluation can make to impact assessment, using a case study of a study carried out to evaluate how a Kenyan nutrition education program had brought about change in the nutritional status of children and in their and their parents’ understanding and practices. Using Bhola’s three dimensions of impact—“impact by design”, “impact by interaction”, and “impact by emergence”—focuses not just on what changes as an intended result of an intervention, but on how change happens and how positive changes can be sustained. The principal focus of the article is methodological and as such it describes in some detail the development of a sequence of participatory visualization and discussion methods and their application with a range of stakeholders, from program staff in the headquarters of the implementing agency, to local government officials, front-line program workers, and beneficiaries. It suggests that the use of a participatory approach can enable researchers and evaluators to gain a fuller picture of incidental and unintended outcomes arising from interventions, making participatory process evaluation a valuable complement to other impact assessment methodologies