Rethinking Women's Empowerment

Abstract

This article examines how orthodox ideas of empowerment have changed for women living in contexts of insecurity. Drawing on fieldwork interviews on women, peace and security in Fiji, Sri Lanka and Timor-Leste, the article reveals a range of culturally different ideas on empowerment that emphasise the community. The interview material raises new questions about the centrality of security to many women's concepts of empowerment. The article suggests holistic ways to rethink context-driven empowerment within broad-based notions of peace and security.

Keywords:

• empowerment
• peace
• security
• women's participation
• UNSCR 1325

Introduction

In 2005, the former UN secretary-general (1997–2006) Kofi Annan said that ‘study after study has taught us that there is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women … no policy is more important in preventing conflict, or in achieving reconciliation after conflict has ended’ (in Australian Agency for International Development [AusAID] 2007, 4). But what exactly does women's empowerment imply? Further, has the ground-breaking United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on ‘women, peace and security’ enhanced empowerment? It urges ‘Member States to ensure increased representation of women at all decision-making levels in national, regional and international institutions and mechanisms for the prevention, management, and resolution of conflict’ (UNSC 2000, para. 1). A central purpose of this paper is to explore the degree to which this representation is viewed by women as an outcome of empowerment.

References to relief and recovery, the traditional domain of development, are broad-ranging in UNSCR 1325, which calls on actors to adopt a gender perspective that responds to ‘the special needs of women and girls during repatriation and resettlement and for rehabilitation, reintegration and post-conflict reconstruction (UNSC 2000, para. 8). Subsequent UNSCRs on women, peace and security, namely, UNSCR 1820 (UNSC 2008), UNSCR 1888 (UNSC 2009a) and UNSCR 1889 (UNSC 2009b), reinforce the call to enhance women's capacities to engage in decision-making at all levels of public life. These resolutions, UNSCR 1325 in particular, provide the context for the ensuing critical exploration of women's empowerment.

In this article, three points are developed. First, some key changes in thinking on empowerment in scholarship and policy are traced. Second, fieldwork data from Fiji, Timor-Leste and Sri Lanka on women, peace and security are highlighted to indicate different ways to understand empowerment through the lens of security, transformative change and participation. Third, the central argument drawn from this data is that understandings of empowerment differ according to cultural contexts, and thus strategies to foster empowerment must be locally driven. This is not a new view. Examples are suggested of culturally different ways to evaluate empowerment that sit within holistic notions of human security and peacebuilding and wide-ranging motivations for women's participation as called for by UNSCR 1325. To this end, the argument is situated in a perspective upon peacebuilding which ‘[i]nvolves all processes that build positive relationships, heal wounds, reconcile antagonistic differences, restore esteem, respect rights, meet basic needs, enhance equality, instil feelings of security, empower moral agency and are democratic, inclusive and just’ (Porter 2007, 34).

Before developing these three points, I make a case for why equality, rights and development are foundational to achieving the sort of empowerment the interviewees indicated is worth striving towards. A rights-based approach to development accepts that every individual has universal, inalienable rights that are accompanied by obligations to protect and respect those rights. The normative framework underlying this approach builds on broad notions of human security as the context in which empowered individuals can counter discrimination, vulnerability and inequalities (Porter 2012). Structural and political changes are necessary not only to overcome subordination, oppression and coercive power relations but also to instigate transformations with positive development outcomes.

Structural and political changes are necessary not only to overcome subordination, oppression and coercive power relations but also to instigate transformations with positive development outcomes.

The ‘capabilities approach’ to development supports this normative framework. Martha Nussbaum describes her capabilities approach as beginning with a simple question: ‘What are people actually able to do and to be? What real opportunities are available to them?’ (Nussbaum 2011, x). These questions address fundamental choices or substantial freedoms that people exercise. She stresses the pluralist nature of the approach, in ‘that the capability achievements that are central for people are different in quality’ because they are specific to individuals and to different cultures (2011, 18–19). ‘The approach is concerned with entrenched social injustice and inequality, especially capability failures that are the result of discrimination or marginalisation’ (2011, 19; author's emphasis). In Nussbaum's work, ‘agency is taken to be central to what it is to be a human being. It is agency that allows an individual to shape his or her own life and make choices that are important to defining his or her own interests, projects, and goals’ (2011, 176).

Christine Koggel makes an important distinction when she writes, ‘I think empowerment is distinguishable from agency because it endorses a focus on individuals as relational and interdependent’ (2010, 176). By this she means that it calls for attention to relations of power, institutional structures and responsiveness to others, including the responsibility to learn about gender differences. This type of empowerment gives individuals and groups a voice in challenging the debilitating forces of dependency, coercion, manipulation and control. It reinstates the political potential of the ideal and practice of empowerment. To summarise, the argument in this article supports Nussbaum's capabilities approach to agency as fundamental to a transformative empowerment that challenges insecurities and gendered inequalities in culturally meaningful ways.

The need to address women's empowerment remains pressing.

The need to address women's empowerment remains pressing. Since 2000 and over a 10-year period of examining country-specific UN resolutions that include language on women and/or gender, only ‘seven per cent of total resolutions monitored and analysed’ (Butler et al. 2010, 37) refer to women in a context of reconstruction in peacebuilding. This means there are stark absences in ‘references to women's economic empowerment as a component of reconstruction and peacebuilding, or the impact that equitable, inclusive reconstruction and peacebuilding can have on the prevention of conflict’ (Butler et al. 2010, 37). Less than 8% of recovery budgets in post-conflict needs assessments ‘identify spending priorities addressing women's needs, and just 5.7 per cent of actual budgetary outlays of multi-donor trust funds in post-conflict countries finance gender equality or women's empowerment projects’ (United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations [UNDPKO] et al. 2010, 7). Obstacles to meeting gender equality and realising women's rights in the relief and recovery of post-conflict societies are vast. Connecting empowerment with the fulfillment of equality and the realisation of rights must be locally driven in order for empowerment to be practised in cultures where gender equality is not the norm.

Connecting empowerment with the fulfillment of equality and the realisation of rights must be locally driven in order for empowerment to be practised in cultures where gender equality is not the norm.

Development Organisations’ Use of the Term ‘Empowerment’

The term ‘empowerment’ is used vaguely. In development policies, it often is a catchphrase that crops up uncritically ‘in the service of today's one-size-fits-all development recipes, spun into a politicised form that everyone can agree with’ (Cornwall and Brock 2005 1043). Traditionally, access to aid, education, and health care is seen as the best route to empowerment, but traditional responses often miss the ways in which power politics constrain access for women. Addressing gendered power relations that are legitimised by local traditions is a prerequisite to breaking down the stereotypical view that gender equals women, and women need set tools prescribed by Western development donors to achieve empowerment.

Addressing gendered power relations that are legitimised by local traditions is a prerequisite to breaking down the stereotypical view that gender equals women, and women need set tools prescribed by Western development donors to achieve empowerment.

The term ‘empowerment’ is used by the UN, governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and in development discourse generally. The UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, formed in 2011 has six main focus areas: violence against women, peace and security, leadership and participation, economic empowerment, national planning and budgeting, and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). MDG 3 aims to ‘promote gender equality and empower women’ (UN MDGs, n.d.). This MDG's focus on measurable targets related to health, education and political participation does not fully engage with gender equality and empowerment.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has an Office of Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment, ‘not only because it is just, because it is necessary for successful development’; its emphasis is on girls' education, maternal and child health and micro-credit loans (USAID 2011). UKaid, within the Department for International Development (DFID), has a women, peace and security section that ‘cuts across a number of sectors, including security and justice, health, education and livelihoods’ (DFID 2011). AusAID explain why the empowerment of women is important by addressing the fundamental issue that ‘gender equality is central to economic and human development … Gender equality is an important human right’ (AusAID 2011). Priority outcomes include the economic status of women, equal participation of women in decision-making in leadership and improved equitable health and education outcomes. What constitutes empowerment is rarely spelled out. It is assumed that promoting gender equality empowers women. This assumption reinforces the fundamental argument in this article, outlined earlier, of the centrality of equality and rights to the realisation of women's empowerment.

It is assumed that promoting gender equality empowers women.

The place of women's empowerment within development agencies working in post-conflict settings is often influenced by a neoliberal development agenda that brings different concepts and practices of empowerment. Certainly since the time of Boutros Boutros-Ghali's ‘Supplement to an Agenda for Peace’ (1995, para. 47), social and economic development has been seen as integral to post-conflict peacebuilding. During conflict resolution and peace processes, debates on the relationships between ‘post-conflict reconstruction and development’ and ‘between political democratisation and socio-economic development’ increasingly occur (Kotzé 2010, 213). But, there are risks when economic productivity is linked too closely to political stability.

For example, empowering women is seen by some development organisations as a way to boost a country's economic growth. This is understandable because ‘[i]nvesting in women pays dividends for the entire community. Typically, women put an average of 90 per cent of their earnings back into the family, compared to the 30 to 40 per cent that men contribute’ (Gender and Development Network 2011, 16). As 2011 statistics testify, at a national level, ‘a one-year increase in school for adult women in a country is associated with an increase in GDP [gross domestic product] per capita of around $700’ (Gender and Development Network 2011, 16). But too often ‘empowerment initiatives to promote a wide range of income-generating activities are based on the belief that enhancing women's spirit of entrepreneurship is a precondition for their social and political emancipation’ (Berkovitch and Kemp 2011, 158). This is reductionist, for reasons explained below.

Critics of the magnitude to which empowerment programmes actually do transform development outcomes argue ‘that neoliberal norms such as individualism, responsibility and economic order have shaped empowerment initiatives to a far greater extent than considerations of local input, marginalised groups, or representation’ (MacKenzie 2009, 200). Economic independence is generally the specified objective of many empowerment programmes. Development discourse can be instrumental when ‘it talks of the necessity to empower women and girls because they will in turn provide the answer to broader social development and poverty reduction’ (Lewin 2010, 222). A problem with this emphasis is that ‘[a] privileging of instrumentalist meanings of empowerment associated with efficiency and growth are crowding out more socially transformative meanings associated with rights and collective action’ (Eyben and Napier-Moore 2009, 285), which, as will be shown shortly, are the meanings the interviewees stressed. They did not equate empowerment with giving clients choices to make demands of the market.

Even when development policies seek to mainstream gender as a cross-cutting issue, empowerment is often reduced ‘from a complex process of self-realisation, self-actualisation and mobilisation to demand change, to a simple act of transformation bestowed by a transfer of money’ (Cornwall et al. 2007, 7).1 The upshot of this is that empowerment is used to justify economic efficiency means, but, as outlined shortly, women's understandings of empowerment are culturally diverse and incorporate many other factors, related to community, participation in decision-making and security.

Measuring Empowerment

Different measures are used to assess the degree of gender empowerment. The Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), developed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in the mid-1990s, has strengths in measuring women's participation in economic, political and professional activities. The GEM has limitations in not taking into account relational aspects of women's lives. Particularly in a situation of conflict, this measure may be irrelevant, totally missing women's self-chosen activities to be combatants, join guerrilla forces or support men in resistance movements. It also misses the grassroots activities of women who are deeply involved informally in conflict resolution, transformation and peacebuilding work in ways that are difficult or impossible to measure. For example, in the changes in Indonesia in 1998 when President Suharto was forced to resign, ‘women's political participation was better measured at that time by the strength of the women's movement, and by the share of women in the leadership of the student demonstrations’ than by the number of women in Parliament (Wieringa 2006, 222). There are other measures, including the Gender Development Index, the Gender Gap Index, the Gender Equality Index and the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index. Since 2012, the Gender Inequality Index, which measures disparities in health, empowerment and labour, has been the dominant tool of measurement.

Dee Jupp and Sohel Ibn Ali have documented an innovative approach to measuring empowerment whereby groups set their own indicators of measurement to develop a ‘context-based experience of empowerment’ (2010, 11). Their report documents the ways in which the Social Movement in Bangladesh, a group of poor people, work to achieve a better life. The Movement found ways to measure empowerment simply by allowing members to explain the benefits they acquired from being part of this movement, and by developing a way to measure these changes over time. Initially, they did this through asking separate groups of women and groups of men in different rural locations to perform a drama that depicted their lives before their association with the Movement, one that illustrated their current situation and a third that illustrated their aspirations for the future. The members came up with 132 different ways to assess what empowerment meant to them. This useful approach ‘privileges people's own experience, their perceptions and realities, resulting in all the indicators being derived from their own analysis of change’ (2010, 16). This approach views empowerment as a dynamic process, consistent with the emphases promoted in this research as it emanates from findings.

Listening to Women's Voices

We come to the crux of this article. Culturally standardised notions of ‘empowerment’ that have manifested in the traditional and neoliberal agendas described above miss culturally relevant nuances around local understandings of the concepts and practices of empowerment. In some countries there may be a close linguistic approximation of the concept, but the term may not be in common usage. Thus it is interesting to examine some practical examples of differing cultural concepts and practices of empowerment. During 2009–2010, Anuradha Mundkur and I conducted fieldwork interviews in Timor-Leste and in Fiji, and Mundkur interviewed Sri Lankans on the challenges and successes of implementing UNSCR 1325.2 The project was funded by the Gender Policy and Coordination Section of AusAID. The goal was to examine the efficacy of UNSCR 1325 in AusAID donor countries. Fieldwork included in-depth semi-structured interviews with 13 individuals from 10 organisations in Timor-Leste, 15 from nine organisations in Fiji and six Sri Lankans from six organisations. We sought a broad cross-section of stories from grassroots women's groups, NGOs, representatives of donor organisations, government officials and legislators in Timor-Leste, Fiji and Sri Lanka with whom we explored a series of questions on issues around women, peace and security (Porter and Mundkur 2012).3

The prime focus of the research was to explore how well UNSCR 1325 was known and implemented in the Asia–Pacific region. Our donors wanted us to identify obstacles to implementing UNSCR 1325, but to concentrate on successes in furthering women's participation in peace and security matters. Hence questions on empowerment took only a minor role in the interviews. The specific question on empowerment was this: ‘Sometimes empowerment means different things to different people. What does empowerment mean to you?’ In questioning men and women on their understandings of empowerment, we pursued additional questions on whether it is money, knowledge, capacity-building or empowerment that really makes a difference to overcoming challenges related to gender inequality. In analysing the responses to the questions on empowerment, my initial impression was that the responses were vague. Even though all but one interview in Timor-Leste were conducted in English, it was clear that the term ‘empowerment’ does not translate well across different languages and cultural contexts. This is an important consideration given that development slogans are sometimes used in an acontextual manner. However, on deeper reflection, I found that responses to the questions on empowerment illuminate significant findings.4

The responses can be summarised thematically. Those who responded directly to questions on empowerment reiterated three common themes. First, empowerment needs to be inclusive of difference. Second, empowerment can only happen when there is a felt sense of security. Third, empowerment prompts transformative changes, including the capacity to mobilise women in local communities to deal with conflict. Those who responded indirectly, that is, they did not necessarily use the word ‘empowerment’ in their answers, highlight two fascinating results. First, women's empowerment leads to a range of practical manifestations of agency in community life. Second, women's participation in decision-making at all levels is a crucial outcome of, and vehicle for, empowerment.

Quotations derived from the fieldwork are now shared in order to illustrate my argument that culturally sensitive empowerment can be transformative in furthering equality and rights. It is beyond the scope of this article to give detailed outlines of the context of the conflicts that occurred or remain in Fiji, Sri Lanka or Timor-Leste. Suffice to say that each country faces ongoing divisions and layers of conflict. Further, in each country, it is a priority for women to realize peace and security, but there are different cultural requirements needed for this realization.

Empowerment as inclusive of difference

A Sri Lankan from the Centre for Women's Research was critical of the concept of empowerment because of its ‘tendency to clump women together’. She highlighted the urgency of differentiating between the needs of women and men as internally displaced persons, refugees, ex-combatants and different ethnic groups within Sri Lanka. In doing so, she alerted us to her fear that the exclusion or marginalisation of women from post-conflict decision-making processes means that the specific issues surrounding women's vulnerability are not addressed adequately, or at all. The Director of FemLINKpacific, a regional women's media network, said, ‘If you are only talking about peace and security, you're kind of chasing conflict. So it will range from aggression in the Solomons, to gun violence and jungle juice in Bougainville, domestic violence keeps coming through from Tonga. From Fiji, it is quite diverse so depending on where we are.’ These statements signal the importance of inclusive gender-differentiated strategies in development and peacebuilding, the context in which empowerment work typically occurs.

However, even introducing gender needs to be done carefully. Discussion with staff members working with the Secretary of State for the Promotion of Equality (SEPI), Timor-Leste, began by saying that ‘gender is still a confusing term to the people, especially in the rural area’. There was a sense, found also by other researchers on other conflicts (Hamber 2007, 10), that the more women become empowered, the more men feel that they lose their status identity. When asked about empowerment, a Timorese worker with SEPI responded by saying, ‘we believe that the women are trapped — they are not in their full capacity … So empowerment here is — you need to find basic capacity.’ When asked to explain this a little more, they used as examples getting women into education, ensuring justice on gender issues, improving channels of communication on women's rights and providing avenues for women's economic involvement. This illustrates how empowerment is manifest in multiple practical ways. When we talked about how difficult the translation of empowerment is into local Tetum and official Portuguese, there was debate on whether ‘enforcer’ or ‘strengthening’ would suffice in terms of their direct linking of empowerment with strengthening capacities.

Mario de Araujo, a founding member of the Men's Association against Violence in Timor-Leste, prompts us to realise that in Timor-Leste many people criticise a concept such as the empowerment of women as ‘breaking Timorese culture and causing men to be more violent and angry as women defy them’ (in Grenfell and Trembath 2007, 14). Thus, addressing structural influences on masculinity and the principle that ‘attitudinal change is critical’ (Hamber 2007, 13), de Araujo suggests that what is helpful is to bring concepts of women's and men's rights and equality into public spaces in which people can see the worth of gender equality and women's empowerment in promoting positive, locally valued community practices.

Empowerment as re-imagining security

Establishing security is a priority in post-conflict societies, because development work cannot start when people are traumatised by violence, homeless, distressed, starving and distrustful of rapid change. Men's and women's experiences of insecurity often differ and thus gender differentiated strategies are needed for there to be a felt sense of security as a basis to realising empowerment. This inclusive view is ‘founded on women's rights to: participate meaningfully in policymaking and resource allocation; benefit substantially from public and private resources and services; and partner collaboratively with men in constructing the new peace and prosperity’ (Greenberg and Zuckerman 2009, 3; author's emphasis). Empowered women contribute significantly to the post-conflict agenda by prioritising practical issues such as reparations for victims, land rights for women, literacy, women's specific health needs and skilled employment (Anderlini 2007; Porter 2007). Ways to address security are multiple.

A senior Timorese worker in a psychosocial recovery trauma counsel unit, dealing particularly with domestic violence and sexual assault victims, responded to questions on empowerment by linking it directly to security. She said, ‘Security is very important. It is very important for a woman-being. Especially for a woman … Security for my understanding is no violence, no have war, … Security is peace.’ There are significant policy implications that can be derived from this statement in understanding the necessity of security as the foundations on which to build local understandings of empowerment. In a comparative study on Northern Ireland, Lebanon and South Africa, other researchers found ambivalent responses to questions about ‘security’, leading them to conclude that ‘a particularised gendered security approach is required to empower women to act as transformative agents’ (Hamber et al. 2006, 491). This approach requires empowered women ‘to re-imagine security in their own terms’ (Hamber et al. 2006, 491), in ways that enhance their agency. This finding overlaps with my argument on the need for culturally adaptive interpretations of the role security plays in facilitating empowerment.

Empowerment as instrumental to transformative change

Our participants talked about the way empowerment brings transformative change by mobilising women in communities to act for change and to deal constructively with conflict. This confirms the political potential of empowerment as mentioned previously. A Fijian regional women's media network talked about empowerment in the context of ‘transforming some of the structures or addressing some of the root causes of the conflict’. A member of the Fiji Women's Rights Movement, with a mandate around legislation reform and policy change, reflected accordingly: ‘I think that in terms of women's empowerment, it is about power with and power to, rather than power over, which is often what men's power is. I like that. In terms of women's power to empower women, it is about getting women to mobilise themselves as a group, to bring about positive change.’ Practically, for women in this movement, empowerment means coming together as part of a community to articulate their specific needs and concerns in order to work out how best to take action. This movement stresses the relationships between communities, cultural specificity, locally driven empowerment and transformation of structural causes of violence.

Again in Fiji, a key member of Women's Action for Change told us that ‘peacebuilding starts with strengthening communities. So it is about community empowerment that enables them to deal with conflicts at all levels.’ However, she refuted the idea that empowerment is a common practice for women in the Fijian culture and said, ‘No, they are quite disempowered. They have been even more disempowered as religion has become more and more fundamentalist.’ A member of the Fijian National Council of Women said, ‘if a woman is informed, the empowerment of the woman at the home is to us, the empowerment of the nation’. To a Western eye, this seems to embody a traditionalist, nationalistic notion of women's role. Deeper deliberation about its meanings reveals the way that everyday empowerment is seen as the first step in making a political contribution. A male government officer in the regional government programme for community empowerment in Fiji stressed how they ‘work with communities to adjust their priorities, converting it into action plans, but using the common tools of participation’.

An Australian researcher working in Timor-Leste on community development concerns suggested to us that ‘empowerment is a very development word … For me I guess, I think “emancipation” is a little bit richer. I think it applies to transformation of social relations.’ A Timorese men's group working against violence, which has at least 500 members of all ages in rural districts as well as in the capital Dili, reiterated a similar idea.5 They said that ‘women and men have the capacity to change’. When asked what sort of change they were referring to, the response was that ‘we do not want discrimination any more so that … [m]en and women can cooperate with each other.’ Such a transformational notion challenges status quo views of gender and challenges views of empowerment that are linked solely to economic efficiency, as discussed earlier.

A senior gender adviser to the UN in Timor-Leste had a lot to say about empowerment. She began by confirming the capabilities approach and said, ‘we believe that women have already basic capacity, so empowerment here is — you need to find basic capacity that they have and how to identify it in themselves’. When asked if she thought it was a Western concept, she replied, ‘no, I think it is an aspiration of every single woman’, and she implied that it does translate culturally into a Timorese concept. She drew out the ‘interconnectedness between security, violence, economic development and domestic violence’, saying that ‘you can't sort of separate it. You can even interpret the non-provision of medical and health facilities, access to justice as a form of violence against women … I clearly feel that when you are talking about security, violence, the whole issue of the status of women and empowerment of women is fundamental to all of these issues.’ This is enlightening, because it demonstrates a broad range of considerations for empowerment to be realised. When asked to elaborate, she said, ‘I bring it down to the very basic, simple level to be able to make an informed choice and to be able to exercise or realise this choice, which is what I would call empowerment.’ This concept of empowerment confirms the capabilities approach discussed early on in this article.

Participation as an outcome of empowerment

Avenues for exercising empowerment must be found. An Australian woman lawyer doing an internship in Fiji with a constitutional rights group had been part of a Fijian women's young leadership programme. However, she felt that ‘there is just nowhere for them to progress to really at the moment, in terms of decision-making’. A representative from the Fiji Women's Rights Movement also discussed democratic processes and said, ‘There is an inter-relation between human rights, democracy and the rule of law. You cannot have one without the other. The only way that women's participation has a chance is by having all those three sorts of pillars working.’ Women from the Pacific Conference of Churches in Fiji also indirectly equated empowerment with rights and equal participation so as to be ‘empowered to contribute in church life’ and to facilitate good relationships between women and men, that is, ‘more working together, more collaboration’.

The potential range of ways to interpret the type of participation that comes from empowerment is fascinating. FemLINKpacific stress the importance of communicating information via radio. The example they gave us is highly pertinent in countries that are technically post-conflict but still have ongoing violence. The director of this organisation gave an example of early warning responses. She asked us to imagine a scenario where ‘a woman will be sitting at a village meeting and she will hear that a roadblock has been planned … How does she communicate if we don't have women sitting on the district committees where peace and security are being addressed?’ She stressed the necessity of capacity-building. ‘My motivation is, we can continue to negotiate for women's spaces, but, unless we are investing in their preparation, what are they going to say when they get to the table?’ Participation in decision-making on peace and security is both an outcome of and a vehicle for women's empowerment.

Participation in decision-making on peace and security is both an outcome of and a vehicle for women's empowerment.

Moving Towards Transformative and Holistic Practices

These examples from fieldwork illustrate culturally different notions of empowerment. In reinstating a transformative dimension to empowerment, they emphasise the power of agency; the importance of equality and rights; the need for culturally holistic adaptations of empowerment; and the imperative to include women as well as men in decision-making on peacebuilding and development. The following definition emerges directly from the fieldwork. Empowerment responds to difference, thrives on security, mobilises insecure communities to deal with conflict and is transformative in creating practical changes, including women's participation in decision-making across all levels of social, political, religious and cultural life.

Empowerment responds to difference, thrives on security, mobilises insecure communities to deal with conflict and is transformative in creating practical changes, including women's participation in decision-making across all levels of social, political, religious and cultural life.

Despite the diversity in understandings of empowerment, there is consensus that resources are fundamental to practicing empowerment. ‘Access to resources (e.g., income, education, land and labour) enables women to exercise agency — that is, women's ability to control resources and decisions’ and make strategic choices about the use of such resources (Dolan and Scott 2009, 205). While agency involves the capacity to make purposeful choices, it has already been noted above that agency is not the same as empowerment. ‘Even when people have the capacity to choose options, they may not be able to use that agency effectively’ when they are constrained by power obstacles or opportunity structures (Alsop et al. 2006, 10). Hence, empowerment programmes must confront the obstacles that deny agents the capacity to make transforming choices, or block agents from acting on their choices. The social relationships that govern access to resources strongly influence the extent to which this potential is realised. As shown above, fieldwork participants emphasised the community strength garnered through empowerment.

Transforming choices into outcomes is important. Saskia Wieringa stresses that empowerment has to be linked not only to major strategic life choices, but also to ‘choices related to daily life’, which is why she developed a Women's Empowerment Matrix that attempts to map interconnections between the ‘physical, social and cultural, religious, political, legal and economic’ spheres where both disempowerment and empowerment are acted out (2006, 216). Naila Kabeer (2005) also usefully conceptualises empowerment in terms of agency, resources and achievement. She maintains that ‘empowerment’ refers to both the ability to make choices and to act on these choices. Agency thus ‘implies not only actively exercising choice, but also doing this in ways that challenge power relations’ (Kabeer 2005, 14). Resources are needed to exercise agency and rectify gender inequalities.

Researchers on projects in Indonesia ‘conceptualise empowerment as development interventions that build marginalised groups’ “capacity to engage” local-level governing elites — and, more generally, to shift power relations' (Gibson and Woolcock 2008, 152). This conceptualisation confirms the interviewees' emphasis on mobilising women in communities. It helps to reclaim the political potential of empowerment. As Noeleen Heyzer, when executive director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), wrote, ‘we must guard against regarding gender equality and women's empowerment as a set of technical tools and concepts de-linked from practice, power, and politics’ (2005, 11).6 Empowerment provides the skills to challenge and transform power relations.

A programme called Women's Empowerment in Muslim Contexts, which seeks to overturn patriarchal structures that undermine gender-equitable Muslim practices, defines women's empowerment as ‘an increased ability to question, challenge and eventually transform unfavourable gendered power relations, often legitimised in the name of “culture”’ (Wee and Shaheed 2008, 16). This definition assumes the basic idea that ‘women can be empowered only through their own agency — that is, through decision and actions undertaken as subjects of their own empowerment’ (Wee and Shaheed 2008, 18). It disputes standard development uses of terms like ‘economic empowerment’ or ‘political empowerment’, which imply that women will become empowered by the introduction of external forms of aid into education, health care, access to health and law. Access to these sectors constitutes the arena where power contests interact with religion and traditional patriarchal culture. Hence, equal participation in decision-making processes, access to resources and control of resources provide tools to challenge inequalities that suppress individual and communal empowerment, as the fieldwork analysis shows. Empowered communities are the primary site for transformative agency.

Empowered communities are the primary site for transformative agency.

The article has argued consistently that holistic approaches to fostering empowerment and to measuring people's well-being must capture the nuance, subtlety and complexity of culturally differentiated meanings. As Sally Engle Merry has argued, ‘a conception of culture as contentious practice provides a more accurate framework for human rights activism’ (2009, 92), the normative underpinning for empowerment strategies. She explains that ‘this concept of culture does focus attention on the strength of local social arrangements in promoting human rights ideals and the importance of framing universalistic reforms in local cultural terms’ (2009, 92).

This returns us to where the paper began, the importance of gaining equality and rights for women living in insecurity. There are sound reasons why this is important. Chances for successful peacebuilding are generally better in societies where women in community groups have greater levels of empowerment. ‘The higher its level of gender inequality, the greater the likelihood that a state will experience intrastate conflict’ (UNIFEM 2010, 25). Women's status in society reflects the existence of multiple social networks and domestic capacity, so that, for example, empowered women in Sierra Leone can mobilise resources to rebuild schools and empowered Rwandan women can form groups from both Hutu and Tutsi communities to reconstruct local services (Gizelis 2009, 505).

Few country development programmes have a gender analysis fully integrated throughout their operations. However, I have argued that a revitalised notion of women's empowerment is possible. When empowerment is combined with equality, rights and agency, a richness of meaning develops. When women and men are able to challenge structured power relations that cause inequalities and injustices and suppress rights, a transformative social and political agenda is possible. The fieldwork data show that empowerment does not translate into cultural meanings in the same way. It also shows that for women the fullest understandings emerge in community groups where women are working together on common concerns.

Developing empowerment, equality and women's and men's rights is important in fostering inclusive peacebuilding strategies. A rights-based commitment to gender equality is the foundation on which culturally literate strategies of empowerment can be fostered. Protecting human rights, promoting women's rights and building gender equality into peace settlements and new legal reforms are increasingly part of the central aims of peacekeeping missions and development donors, when they work closely together. ‘The message of “women build peace” is transformative, empowering, and can gain traction’ (Anderlini and Tirman 2010, 5). Donors, working in partnership with local women's organisations that understand cultures' entrenched gender biases, can raise the potential to develop community capacities of empowerment that will collectively fight for resistance to inequalities, injustices, power blocs and marginalisation. Culturally sensitive empowerment is a powerful ethical goal and a transformative, political practice linked with justice, equality and rights. Considerable rethinking and re-strategising will be required in order for empowerment to become meaningful in furthering security for men and women.

Culturally sensitive empowerment is a powerful ethical goal and a transformative, political practice linked with justice, equality and rights.

Notes

¹ The main thrust of grassroots empowerment projects initiated by NGOs involved in community development rejects the idea that profit alone is the sole purpose of economic activity.

² Our funders gave us initial leads on who to contact and in the main the organisations interviewed came from these recommendations.

³ The number of interviews does not represent a large research base, but this was not a definitive empirical study. Rather the interviews helped to guide our analysis.

⁴ The interviews have been analysed thematically. Qualitative software was not used. Unreferenced quotations are from fieldwork interviews. The research was approved by the University of South Australia and Flinders University Ethics Committees. Interviewees consented to their words being published and their organisations identified. They are identified by their role and organisation rather than by name.

⁵ This was the only interview conducted through translation from another member of the men's group to the director of the group.

⁶ UNIFEM is now part of the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.