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Empowerment in Social Work: Practice with Older Women (Empowerment (a…
Empowerment in Social Work: Practice with Older Women
Empowerment
a process
an intervention
a skill
Elderly women constitute one of the fastest growing segments of the U.S. population
Growing numbers of older women in the U.S. population suggest the importance of initiating a new discourse on the needs and abilities of older women, their preferred styles of empowerment, and the implications for social work practice
The traditional definition of power
"possession of control or influence over others, legal or official authority, capacity, or right," or "physical might
Van Den Bergh and Cooper
power is seen as a finite commodity to be controlled, particularly in determining the distribution of rights, resources, and opportunities
In contemporary society as a popular term
emphasis on individual self-assertion, upward mobility, and personal advancement, or the psychological experience of being powerful
Solomon
an intervention and strategy
Empowerment as one of the major skills and responsibilities of today's social worker
Pinderhughes
the individual feeling of increased power and the capacity to influence the forces that affect one's life space, with less of a focus on changes in the social structure
Gutierrez
one in which individual empowerment contributes to group empowerment and in which increases in group power enhance the functioning of individual members
Chandler
supported the growing role of mediation
empowerment might be replacing advocacy
Feminist
What we begin to see from these and other feminist theorists is how power and empowerment have been reconceptualized— more as a process than a thing, with a focus more on power as energy, potential, and competence
Audre Lorde
Hannah Arendt
Dorothy Emmet
Hartsock
the point of having power over another is to liberate the other rather than to dominate and kill
Booman and Morgen
"empowerment" = a spectrum of political activities ranging from individual resistance to mass political mobilizations that challenge the basic power relations in society
conceptualization of empowerment
the process of liberation of self and others, as a life force, a potential, a capacity, growth, and energy, where one works toward community and connection responsibly as opposed to working primarily toward one's individual good.
social relatedness, energy, capacity, and an emphasis on community good
three major paradigms
liberal—feminist
difference between men and women
essentialism
critics
"bottling old wine in new bottles."
attributing certain natural qualities of nurturing only to women
exclusive emphasis on the values of community
sociohistorical
postmodernist
Sands and Nuccio
this perspective provoked the need for reconceptualizations of many social work assumptions.
Critique of Present Conceptualizations
Problematic parts in reconceptualization of empowerment
traditional definition focuses on domination and control, individual gain, and upward mobility
a conceptualization, clearly out of reach for many older women
more structual than intrapsychic
ignored the qualities of relatedness and connection
Reconceptualization of empowerment
(emphasize) community and the collective good
the reality of social power
transformational social and political change