Maheen Sultan

Deputy Coordinator, Centre for Gender

and Social Transformation (CGST), BRAC
Institute of Governance and
Development.
The views expressed in this paper are the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views
or policies of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), or its Board of Governors, or the governments they
represent. ADB does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this paper and accepts no
responsibility for any consequence of their use. The countries listed in this paper do not imply any view
on ADB's part as to sovereignty or independent status or necessarily conform to ADB's terminology..

 What

was it?
When was it?
Who was involved?
What did it do?

Three entry points: body, voice and work

Conceptualising womens empowerment

The predominant image evoked by international

development agencies when they talk of
empowerment is of women gaining the
(material) means to empower themselves as
individuals, and putting this to the service of
their families and communities. This tends to
neglect what women are doing for and by
themselves to bring about change in their lives.
The Pathways programme set out to look for
these hidden pathways, as well as at the
better-known routes that those concerned with
womens empowerment were promoting.
Our interest is not just in individuals pathways
of change, nor only in what women are doing to
change their own personal circumstances.

Our exploration of pathways of positive change

extends to collective action and institutionalised
mechanisms that are aimed at changing structural
relations as well as individual circumstances.
We look beyond deliberate or planned intervention to
try to gain a better understanding of what is
happening in womens lives as a result of cultural,
economic and other changes, such as the availability
of new technologies such as mobile phones and
satellite television.
And as well as focusing on womens current
opportunities and constraints, our work situates
empowerment as a process in time, exploring change
and continuities across generations.

Giving women more opportunities to earn a

living has become a major development priority.
But the question of how to get more women into
work is rarely accompanied by asking what
would make such work empowering?
Pathways researchers explored the conditions
under which womens livelihood strategies
offered them pathways of empowerment.
Quantitative and qualitative research revealed
links between womens lack of voice and control
over their lives, and inability to generate regular
and independent sources of income.

 Empowerment

is a term that is foreign in

most languages. It is a concept that has a
variety of different meanings associated with
it
Looking beyond the ways empowerment is
defined and measured to representations of
womens empowerment,
efforts to generate new images of womens
empowerment, in photographs, short stories
and film that would challenge stereotypes
and go beyond the representation of women
as victims or heroines.

1.

2.

3.

4.

Those who want to support womens empowerment

need to move beyond seeing women as victims or
heroines, and engage with their everyday realities.
What is empowering to one woman is not necessarily
empowering to another: understanding empowerment
needs to begin from womens own experiences, rather
than being limited by a focus on existing assumptions.
Participatory methods which enable women to explore
their own situations and represent themselves can
enrich and democratise the research process.
Efforts to promote womens empowerment need to do
more than give individual women economic
opportunities. They need to tackle deeper-rooted
structural constraints that perpetuate inequalities.

5. Policies and laws that affirm womens rights and

open up pathways for womens empowerment are
critically important. But they are not in themselves
sufficient to change womens lives.
6. Womens organizing is the key to sustainable
change.
7. Global institutions would benefit from listening
more to local women and doing more to support
existing local agendas for womens empowerment.
8. Fostering public engagement and debate is
essential to making policies that work for womens
empowerment and gender equality. The media and
popular culture have a vital role to play in this.

9. Womens empowerment is mediated through relationships

through networks, coalitions, organizing and organizations,
and also through social and family relationships.
Relationships matter.
10. Recognising and supporting those within the state who are
responsible for the implementation of womens
empowerment interventions is crucial. Front-line workers
can be vital agents of change.
11. Sexuality is a vital but neglected dimension of womens
empowerment. Positive approaches to sexuality can be an
important driver of change in womens lives.
12. Changing attitudes and values is as important to bringing
about womens empowerment as changing womens
material circumstances and political opportunities.

Access to paid work brings about a variety of positive

changes in womens lives that are likely to contribute
to womens increased access to material resources
and greater agency in their life choices.
Formal employment is most likely to lead to women
exercising a degree of autonomy over their incomes,
to having their own bank accounts, to be able to
move around in the public sphere unaccompanied, to
vote in elections, and to be able to decide about their
own medical treatment.
Women in outside informal employment also
displayed these characteristics but in their case, their
greater poverty and the less favourable conditions
under which they worked, partly offset the
transformative potential of earning status.