Conceptions of Women's Empowerment - Resources

Useful Resources

Commonwealth Secretariat, 2007, Financing Gender Equality: Commonwealth Perspectives, London: Commonwealth Secretariat (with chapters by Andrea Cornwall and Stephanie Barrientos.

Oxfam Australia, 2009, 'Breaking the Shackles: Women's Empowerment in Oxfam Australia's Sri Lanka Program'
The objective of this gender impact study was to assess whether and how Oxfam's work in Sri Lanka has resulted in qualitative changes in gender equality and the empowerment of women.

Ruth Paterson, 2005, 'Women's Empowerment in Challenging Environments: A Case Study from Balochistan', MA Governance and Development Candidate 2004-2005, IDS Dissertation (pdf file 1.3 MB).

Summary:

Women's empowerment is a commonly cited objective of development projects. There is a growing literature on what women's empowerment means, and how it can be facilitated. An innovative program in Pakistan addresses several of the gaps in the literature by mitigating and addressing resistance through involving the participants' families, by using collective learning but not collective action, and by selecting participants based on aptitude without consideration for their socio-economic status. This paper draws lessons for women's empowerment policy and practice from this case study.

'Fracturing Binarisms: Gender and Colonialisms in Africa', Odile Goerg, Marie Rodet and Natalya Vince (eds), Vienna Journal of African Studies, No. 12, 2007

UNIFEM, 2008, Progress of the World's Women 2008/2009, Who Answers to Women? Gender and Accountability, http://www.unifem.org/progress/2008/