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Reflections on the Measurement of Women’s Empowerment —— Naila Kabeer -…
Reflections on the Measurement of Women’s Empowerment —— Naila Kabeer
women’s empowerment
is about the process by which those who have been denied the ability to make strategic life
choices
acquire such an ability
The ability to exercise choice incorporates three inter-related
dimensions
resources (pre-conditions)
Resources in this broader sense of the word are acquired through a multiplicity of social relationships conducted in the various institutional domains which make up a society
agency (process)
‘power to’, people’s capacity to define their
own life-choices and to pursue their own goals
‘power over’, the capacity of an actor or category of actors to over-ride the agency of others
achievements (outcomes)
the notion of empowerment is that it is inescapably bound up with the condition of disempowerment
. It is only when the failure to achieve one’s goals reflects some deep-seated constraint on the ability to choose that it can be taken as a manifestation of disempowerment.
Strategic life choices are critical for people
to live the lives they want. They help to frame otherless consequential choices, which may be important for the quality of one’s life but do not constitute its defining parameters.
meanings of measurements
resources
access
control
values of indicators
insider values
variables of ‘cultural context’
outsider values
the concept of power
the ability to choose
the notion of choice
the conditions of choice
choices made from the vantage point of alternatives
choices reflecting the absence, or the punishingly high cost, of alternatives
consequences of choice
order
second-order choices
strategic life choices
transformatory significance
the choices made have the potential for challenging and destabilizing social inequalities
the choices made merely express and reproduce those inequalities
the interdependence of individual and structural change in processes of empowerment
Structures shape individual resources, agency and achievements.
How people define their goals and what they value will reflect their social positioning as well as their individual histories, tastes and preferences.