Women, NGOs and the Contradictions of Empowerment and Disempowerment: A Conversation

Abstract

For the last few years, both of us have grappled with difficult and complex issues of empowerment and disempowerment in relation to our respective research projects on women's grassroots organizations in several states of India, including Rajasthan, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal. As we exchanged notes over time, we noticed some recurring themes in our concerns-for example: the ways in which co-option of feminist and empowerment discourse(s) by the mainstream forces have become increasingly vexed questions for the women's movement in India; the problematics associated with "doing" empowerment on the ground at a time when "Southern" women's nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are becoming increasingly professionalized and globalized; the entanglement of empowerment and disempowerment in poor women's lives; and the political complexities associated with engaging in critiques of NGOs that are trying to empower marginalized women.We thought it would be productive to co-author a paper on these issues, largely because of the striking silence in academic circles on these questions at a time when they are being felt and discussed so urgently within women's NGO networks. However, as we began to put our thoughts on paper, we were struck by the enormous contradictions these projects are fraught with, as well as by the ways in which our own sociopolitical locations as researchers and our ethical and political commitments to different kinds of groups made it impossible

Globalization and Postcolonial States

“…The occasional use of these very procedures by staff members to discipline their clients also engenders hierarchies between program representatives and participants. One way to interpret these processes is to argue that the deployment by the state of empowerment as a category and strategy of governance and its professionalization are subverting empowerment's potentially radical agenda (Gledhill; see also Nagar and Raju 2003). The other way to look at it is to examine the unintended politicization that ends up happening in the context of state-initiated empowerment (Sharma 2006).…”

Under-served and un-deserving: Youth empowerment programs, poverty discourses and subject formation

“…While empowerment programs in the global South have been heavily critiqued for incorporating individuals into a market economy as self-sufficient economic actors, youth empowerment programs in cities of the United States operate with different goals (Fernando, 1997;Nagar and Raju, 2003;Dingo, 2012). These programs still focus on individual level programming, but with the goal of teaching ''life skills'' to help address multiple, relational experiences of poverty rather than solely through economic measures.…”

“…Additionally, on the heels of a growing alternative food movement, the model for such youth empowerment is increasingly deployed through urban gardening programs (Pudup, 2008;Knigge, 2009). 1 Unlike international development programs that approach empowerment through individualistic, economic means (Fernando, 1997;Nagar and Raju, 2003;Miraftab, 2004), youth empowerment organizations often approach impoverishment from a relational perspective. They recognize that young people are marginalized across multiple social and economic factors: age, race, class, gender, ability, language spoken, mobility, education, etc.…”

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

“…Very briefly, apart from actualisation at individual and collective level, empowerment is a relational construct, i.e., women learning to negotiate, communicate, seek support and defend their sense of 'self ' with dignity with other players in an environment which is essentially asymmetrical in terms of power (Batliwala, 1997;Cornwell, 2003;Kabeer, 1994;Kandiyoti, 1998;Rowlands, 1997). Defined thus, women's empowerment has an implicit component of involvement of stakeholders beyond the obvious-women themselves (Nagar & Raju, 2003).…”

“…It was important for them they said that they are now recognized as individuals and that their identities are no longer masked under thumbprints nobody knows whom they belong to. They also narrated how earlier some of them would not even talk face-to-face with strangers particularly men (also, see Nagar & Raju, 2003).…”