Institute of Development Studies

Women’s Empowerment in Contexts of Crisis

1 February 2010 - Andrea Cornwall

Women's empowerment is high on the development agenda. What does empowerment mean to women living in situations of conflict or crisis? How do they see their own and other women's prospects of gaining greater control over their bodies, greater voice in the public arena and better work opportunities? And how do they see efforts to promote women's empowerment contributing to a more just and equal society?

With funding from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Pathways of Women's Empowerment Research Programme Consortium, hosted at IDS, has been exploring these questions in Afghanistan, Palestine and Sierra Leone. Here, Consortium Director, Andrea Cornwall shares insights from a recent trip to Palestine.

Contextualising ‘Empowerment'

Too often, what is said and done in the name of development lacks a sense of place, of history and of the political and cultural dynamics of change. But it is all very well saying ‘context matters'. What does this actually amount to in practice?

On a recent visit to Birzeit University in Ramallah, I was able to appreciate at first hand how important it is to contextualise understandings of women's empowerment and disempowerment. I became aware of how the Israeli occupation impinges on everyday life - not just the overt violations of human rights and illegal annexations of land that regularly feature in the news, but also daily humiliations and threats of menace from capricious intervention.

Colleagues at Birzeit felt little affinity with the word ‘empowerment'. For them it was a term associated with a neo-liberal discourse that sought to give women things rather than challenge and transform the unfairness they experience in their lives. As one put it, bluntly, in a situation of brutal and illegal occupation where all Palestinians are oppressed, what prospects can there be for anyone's empowerment? And as others pointed out, how can you have a sense of greater control over your life and your destiny when your people have been systematically deprived of their land, treated like second-class citizens and denied the right of self-determination?

(En)Countering Contradictions

In the tensions and contradictions that emerge between resistance to the occupation and development, Palestinian civil society has become ‘NGOised', Palestinian colleagues suggested. Birzeit researchers Eileen Kuttab and Randa Nasser are exploring the implications. Eileen Kuttab juxtaposes the stagnancy of development industry discourses with social and political energy generated by Palestinian community-based activism, with its transformative promise. Randa Nasser probes an uncomfortable dissonance between what activists advocate for others and what they do in their own lives, exploring how empowered the apparently empowered actually are.

Quotas: Pathways to Empowerment?

Quota systems have been an important instrument to increase women's numerical presence in formal political arenas. Islah Jad, Director of the Institute of Women's Studies at Birzeit, has been researching the politics of the use of quotas in Palestine. Looking more closely at who is gaining entry via quotas, and how they are being put to use, she suggests, raises questions about quite who - and which agendas - are being empowered through quotas. Her work emphasises the importance of seeing the bigger picture. Empowering some women to enter formal politics should not be confused with addressing the patriarchal biases that pervade political and legal systems, and society in general. Quotas need to be complemented with initiatives that can enhance women's collective voice, and tackle deeper-rooted barriers to women's political participation and representation.

Empowering Technologies

Penny Johnson, another member of Birzeit's Pathways team, has been looking at the experiences of adolescent women in Palestinian refugee camps. Her research reveals hitherto hidden pathways of empowerment. For many of the young women she talked with, mobile phones, satellite TV and the internet have opened up new worlds, giving them the opportunity to re-envisage the horizons of the possible in their own lives. But these same technologies are also seen as sources of moral danger. What women feel they need may be very different to what NGOs are offering them. She tells the story of one young woman, who talked about all the NGOs doing training for them, ‘really, we are bored from always having the same subject, communications workshops, democracy. Learning about our bodies would be better'.

Development and Freedom

Most of all, my visit to Palestine impressed upon me the fundamentals that any people need if they are to embark on pathways of empowerment. The possibilities of women's empowerment in Palestine are complicated by the way the donor community has reacted to the Palestinians' situation: withdrawing resources, and financing the NGOisation that distances organisations from grassroots concerns and agendas. If development agencies are serious about the fine words framing the moral agenda of development - justice, freedom, wellbeing - then alongside their efforts to enhance gender equality, there are no longer any excuses for evading the need to address the most potent barrier to empowerment in this part of the world: the Israeli occupation.

Andrea Cornwall is IDS Research Fellow and Director, Pathways of Women's Empowerment Research Consortium.

Photo: Bashar Hassouneh.

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Related Projects

• Pathways of Women's Empowerment Research Programme Consortium - International research and communications programme finding out what works to enhance women’s empowerment (Ongoing)

Related Links

• Pathways of Women's Empowerment - Middle East Blog