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Reconceptualizing Women’s Agency and Empowerment (PSYCHOLOGIZING WOMEN’S…
Reconceptualizing Women’s Agency and Empowerment
EMPOWERMENT
the needs and experiences of women who break the law
psychological notion of empowerment
how we conceive of women’s agency and women’s choices
Young/Townsend
psychological and social aspects of empowerment are related
feelings of disempowerment
lead to women’s lawbreaking behaviour
three main ways
that empowerment
is understood
(Browne)
psychological
quality that provides individuals with the feeling that they can control the direction of their lives
a set of
practitioner
skills
claiming that individuals are empowered through sharing experiences, raising consciousness, collective action and advocacy
SELF-ESTEEM
to live responsibly and that inoculates us against the lures of crime, violence, substance abuse, teen pregnancy, child abuse, chronic welfare dependency and educational failure
low self-esteem
a feeling that one is not empowered to make positive choices and direct the course of one’s life
‘‘cure’’
interventions aimed at improving individual morale and feelings of self-worth
PSYCHOLOGIZING WOMEN’S CRIME
understanding the gender biases
the violent actions of a woman are made somehow palatable if we can understand her behaviour as a result of mental instability
over the majority of women in prisons have experienced childhood physical and sexual abuse in addition to violence in their adult relationships with men
victim identity
associated with being a victim are dependency, passivity, weakness, and low self-esteem
criminogenic need
woman’s reason for committing her crime
impact on the reasons some women break the law
sexism
racial marginalization
poverty
INDIVIDUALISTIC NOTION OF AGENCY
Western liberal thought the concept of victim and the concept of agent are vylučující seen as mutually exclusive
victimization
women’s active attempts to resist, cope with or stop abuse and other oppression invisible
understanding victimization as a dimension of experience provides space for the possibility of women’s agency
an individual sense + political agency
an agent
is one who is not oppressed, who is not victimized, by exposing some of the ways in which women act as agents under oppression
THE CONCEPT OF ‘‘RELATIONAL AUTONOMY’’
theoretical framework in which to explore the space between women’s victimization and oppression and women’s active responses to these conditions
to dislodge the victim/agent dichotomy
Autonomy is being either fostered or enhanced by one’s relationship to sources of political and social resources and power
IMPLICATIONS for women’s prison programming and policy
relationship between program facilitators and program participants
the importance of enhancing community links
therapeutic programming
the importance of uncovering the impact that trauma and substance abuse has on women’s sense of themselves as autonomous agents