STUDY ON VARIOUS COMPONENTS OF WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT

Women’s empowerment is on the international development agenda. Education is often touted as a way to promote women’s empowerment. Previous research suggests that women’s education is strongly associated with desirable social outcomes, or to borrow a phrase from Robinson-Pant, women’s education is a „good thing‟‟ (2004, 474). However, linking education to women‟ s empowerment has rarely been informed by empirical analyses (Malhotra and Mather 1997),particularly qualitative studies. The tendency in international development discourse has been to equate years of schooling or literacy with empowerment, as if the two are unquestionably linked .For example, the ratio of literate women to men 15- to 24-years-old and the ratio of girls to boysin primary, secondary and tertiary education are two indicators of the Millenium Development Goal to „promote gender equality and empower women‟. Missing from the discourse on education and women’s empowerment is a discussion of the process by which education can transform dominant values and gender inequality (Robinson-Pant 2004).There is little debate that women’s empowerment is a critical goal of international development initiatives. What role, if any, can education play in advancing this goal? This article hopes to shed light on this question by first identifying mechanisms through which education might foster empowerment and second by describing the curricular features necessary for education to be genuinely „empowering‟. In the following pages I present findings from a qualitative study of the ways in which an innovative secondary education program, Sistema de Aprendizaje Tutorial promotes women’s empowerment. Interviews and observation were conducted in Garifuna communities on the north coast of Honduras between January and June 2004. The findings from this study suggest that education can act as a catalyst of empowerment if it increases women’s knowledge and understanding, self confidence, and awareness of gender equity. I then “The idea of „power‟ is at the root of the term empowerment. Power can be understood as operating in a number of different ways”: power over, power to, power with, power within. (Oxaal & Baden, 1997) “The feminist movement has emphasized collective organization („power with‟) and has been influential in developing ideas about „power within.” Power within “refers to self confidence, self awareness and assertiveness. It relates to how individuals can recognize through analyzing their experience, how power operates in their lives, and gain the confidence to act to influence and change this.”(Oxaal & Baden, 1997) Therefore empowerment is about self-esteem, awareness, consciousness and confidence. It focuses participation into decision-making and “Empowerment reduces vulnerabilities, decreases dependency, implies action not passivity, and means being at the center, not on the periphery.” (Everett, 1991) It can be analyzed at individual, household and institutional level. Many income generating programs aiming towards empowerment measure their impact by looking at the improvement in the target groups mobility, economic security, ability to make small purchases, ability to make larger purchases, involvement in major household decisions, relative freedom from domination within the family, political and legal awareness, involvement in political campaigning and protests. (Oxaal & Baden, 1997)