Women Empowerment Literature Review

In that respect is no consensus that has been accepted on defining women’s empowerment. Women’s empowerment has been linked with terms such as self-determination, autonomy, agency, authority, emancipation and power. Researchers on women’s empowerment have categorized the concept as “multilevel”, “non-unitary” and “multidimensional” making it hard to arrive at an accord on its definition (Sen and Batliwala, 2000; Malhotra and Mather 1997). Despite the difficulty in arriving at a consensus on the definition of the condition, it is not a hindrance in accepting the influence of women; instead it makes it vital to clearly see the meaning of empowerment. Seine (1999), define empowerment as an expansion in individual’s agency, i.e. expansion in one’s power to

In her work, one of the means to consider power is “the power to produce a choice” (Kabeer, 1999). The soul is denied choice if they are disempowered whiles to be empowered means the procedure by which those who have been denied the ability to make choices acquire such power. She further told that, empowerment entails change. People who do a large batch of choice in their lives may be very powerful, but they are not empowered, in the sense in which she applies the term, because they were never disempowered in the first place (Kabber, 1999). Notwithstanding, for there to be a genuine alternative, certain conditions must be fulfilled: There must be alternatives the ability to have chosen otherwise. Poverty and disempowerment generally go hand in hand, because an inability to take on one’s basic needs – and the resulting dependence on powerful others to do so rules out the capacity for meaningful choice. This absence of choice is likely to affect women and men differently, because gender-related inequalities often intensify the effects of