Limited Options—Rethinking Women’s Empowerment ‘Projects’ in Development Discourses: A Case from Rural India

Abstract

Very often developmental initiatives that look relatively better-conceptualized and inclusive at the outset fail to impact on several basic issues embedded in asymmetrical gendered power dynamics, despite creating some supportive structures for women's empowerment. Based on a case study from rural northern India, this article illustrates how the failure to address issues such as the survival chances of girl children or the prevalence of child marriages in the project region stems from its misplaced and limited notions about women's empowerment. The author argues that the project approach is essentially women-centered and focuses at women's individual and collective levels without addressing the relational domains of women vis-à-vis men in every day existential lives dominated by the extreme patriarchy for which the project site is known. Neither does the project envisage that any transformative social change implicit in trying to 'empower' women needs to look critically at broader economical, social and political structures that might require participation by stakeholders other than women alone in dealing with different forms of gender cooperation and conflicts at different levels. The article throws open several theoretical questions and broader issues of how empowerment is a double-edged and contested concept and what women-centric state discourses can or cannot achieve. It is suggested that given the local specificities and embedded structures, a spatially contextualized approach has to be in place as there cannot be a meta-narrative or a blueprint for women's empowerment.

Contextualising gender empowerment at the grassroots: a tale of two policy initiatives

“…As the conceptual formulations translate into action-'doing gender' on the ground, further inadequacies enter because many of the finer points are lost (Cornwell, 2003;Raju, 2005). Some omissions are suspiciously intentional although at the outset they may not appear to be so.…”

“…The first example is from a highly patriarchal state located in the northern part of India, where the author has conducted a post-intervention evaluation study (Raju, 2005). The second example draws from Deshmukh-Ranadive's account of a project in Andhra Pradesh with which she was associated as the project director (DeshmukhRanadive, 2003).…”

“…The problematic that is central to my concern: the mismatch between the stated objectives of the project and transferring them to the ground and the contradictions arising from negotiating contested boundaries between tradition and progress occurs because the project left untouched the micro sociopolitical environments in women's homes (Raju, 2005). The qualitative interviews conducted with women across the sampled households as well as husbands of the women members clearly suggested that within the families, women could not negotiate and assert their reproductive rights in critical areas of interpersonal relationships.…”

Development as Struggle: Confronting the Reality of Power in Palestine

“…21 As a result, development practice tends to "aim at improving those at the margins within the existing systems without really questioning the unequal power dynamics that create inequality in the first place." 22 The remainder of this paper concerns selected features of Israeli settler colonialism and its impact on development processes. Before moving to this discussion, however, it is necessary to first articulate the concept of power.…”

Including the excluded: marginalised poor communities and development practices in rural Nepal

“…Empowerment is probably an overused term in contemporary development literature, and also the most poorly theorised, having diverse connotations in different contexts, with the risks of oversimplification (Kesby 2005;Raju 2005;Ibrahim & Alkire 2007;Tesoriero 2010;Cornwall 2016).…”