(Re)politicizing empowerment: Lessons from the South African wine industry

McEwan, Cheryl; Bek, David

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2006.06.004

Cited by 45 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…While the term 'empowerment' has gained considerable currency in recent times within development dialogue, there remain issues with how 'empowerment' has been conceptualised, analysed and assessed; few academics or development agencies can agree on the exact meaning of the term (McEwan and Bek, 2006, Rowlands, 1995, Rowlands, 1997. Rowlands claims that "the term may be used merely to communicate good intentions, and to imply some unspecified recognition of the need for changes in the distribution of power" (Rowlands, 1997:7).…”

Section: Women's Empowermentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nevertheless, we can unpack some underlying concepts. The term 'empowerment' hints at a transfer or acquisition of power, be it by an individual or by a group (Kabeer, 1999, Kabeer, 2000, McEwan and Bek, 2006, Rowlands, 1995, Rowlands, 1997 and for those focusing on citizenship, it is "the process of awareness and capacity-building, which increases the participation and decision-making power of citizens and may potentially lead to transformative action" (Andersen and Siim, 2004). More theoretically, empowerment has been conceptualized as resulting from four different kinds of power.…”

Section: Women's Empowermentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More theoretically, empowerment has been conceptualized as resulting from four different kinds of power. The most common meaning power is given is influence or 'power over ' (McEwan and Bek, 2006, Rowlands, 1995, Rowlands, 1997. Other forms of power are 'power to' which is decision-making power, also referred to as "generative or productive power"; 'power with' which is collective power; and 'power within' which is personal power (Rowlands, 1997:13).…”

Section: Women's Empowermentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Employment can help to foster women's 'power within', which allows them to imagine new ways of being and doing (McEwan and Bek, 2006) and in turn helps them to exercise both 'power to' and 'power with': "I used to be very shy" said a packhouse supervisor in Naivasha, "Not anymore. I am a lot more confident now and can even speak in front of large groups of people".…”

Section: Women's Power and Empowerment Within Gvcsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It can be seen to encompass 'power within' as it allows women to "contemplate alternative ways of existing and generating a belief in their own abilities to have some role in enacting change" (McEwan andBek, 2006:1025).…”

Section: Different Ways Of Beingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Pathways to empowerment?: dynamics of women's participation in Global Value Chains

Said-Allsopp

Tallontire

2015

Journal of Cleaner Production

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Gender plays an important role in shaping the outcomes of participation within Global Value Chains (GVCs). Employment in GVCs may have potential to empower women, but little is known about the dynamics by which GVCs bring about empowerment, rather studies highlight abuse of women's rights and on-going gender-based discrimination. This paper considers whether and how employment within GVCs empowers women workers. By drawing from an in-depth empirical study of women workers employed in the Kenyan tea and cut-flower industries, it develops three interlinked pathways to empowerment through employment in GVCs. These pathways based on 'being', 'doing' and 'sharing' offer some positive changes from the women workers' perspectives. In so doing, we offer a more nuanced perspective on employment for women in GVCs in African agriculture, acknowledging the constraints but also noting the potential for positive outcomes.

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Section: Women's Empowermentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Women's Empowermentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Women's Empowermentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Women's Power and Empowerment Within Gvcsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Different Ways Of Beingmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Pathways to empowerment?: dynamics of women's participation in Global Value Chains

Said-Allsopp

Tallontire

2015

Journal of Cleaner Production

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Governance: Solving or Reproducing Inequalities

Lima¹,

Mairon²

2021

The Politics of Bioeconomy and Sustainability

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Socio-economic and political inequalities in the world are not fortuitous. They usually are the product of inequity, i.e., structural causes that unevenly attribute roles, distribute benefits and burdens, and create skewed conditions of access to resources. Understanding the workings of governance-how institutions operate, how actors can exert power, and how allocation patterns take shape-behind the reproduction of inequalities is key to solving them. This task is particularly imperative in sustainable development governance (or any specific sector therein, such as the bioeconomy), where the promotion of social equity is a principled part of it. Drawing from institutions theory and studies on power and distributive justice, this chapter develops a conceptual framework to analyze how (in)equity gains shape. It advances the idea that short and long feedback loops link various elements of governance. Agent power configurations are related to the institutional milieu, as are the distributive outcomes of governance and agents' material capabilities that, in turn, help them shape institutions in their favor. The chapter unpacks each of these governance elements to show why inequality is so hard to address, while also offering a lens to analyze and eventually tackle its "lock-in" nature. Keywords Equity • Institutions • Power • Agency • Access and allocation • Governance architectures The Inequity of InequalityAs income and wealth inequalities rise to their highest levels in decades in OECD countries-while persisting in much of the developing world-fairness debates have become increasingly common in the social sciences and beyond. As an illustration, Oxfam has noted that the combined wealth of the world's 22 richest men is larger than that of all the women in Africa (Coffey et al. 2020). Relative easiness to measure makes income a common focus of attention, but inequalities are multi-dimensional. There are social inequalities related to differences and imbalances across genders, races or classes, cultural inequalities between social groups, and political inequalities in terms of capacity to influence social norms and decision-making processes. There are also other dimensions of economic inequality, besides those of wealth and income,

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The Politics for a Fairer Bioeconomy

Lima¹,

Mairon²

2021

The Politics of Bioeconomy and Sustainability

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Bioeconomies are yet to meet their sustainable development potentials. Thus far, mostly unsustainable production has prevailed, due to reasons on four different levels. First, domestic regulatory and economic incentives have favored conventional, input-intensive monocultures and big agribusiness-controlled systems. Second, some norms have been crucial in underlying those policies: (i) the economic but not political inclusion of smallholders and low-income countries; (ii) the preeminence of climate and wild biodiversity conservation over other sustainability issues, assuming "renewable" to mean "sustainable" and disregarding the performance of bio-based production on other social and environmental criteria; and (iii) an implicit urban bias that limits rural development strategies and prioritizes the provision of resources to cities. Third, state and private agroindustry agents who espouse those norms have formed winning coalitions to concretize policy beliefs held in common. Ultimately, there are feedback loops between agency, governance architectures, and allocation and access patterns. Therefore, the prevailing production patterns' very distributive outcomes can be identified as a cause underlying their dominance. As such, social equity reveals to be not just a normative goal but also a key determinant of governance. To not aggravate inequalities and be more sustainable, bioeconomy promotion needs policies that reconfigure allocation patterns and promote structural change.

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(Re)politicizing empowerment: Lessons from the South African wine industry

Cited by 45 publications

References 37 publications

Pathways to empowerment?: dynamics of women's participation in Global Value Chains

Pathways to empowerment?: dynamics of women's participation in Global Value Chains

Governance: Solving or Reproducing Inequalities

The Politics for a Fairer Bioeconomy

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