Gender and Empowerment -By Suleiman Lawan Kolomi

Development institutions like United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the World Bank, governmental agencies, national and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has given attention to empowerment, particularly for women and the poor over the recent decades. Empowerment was regarded as a weapon for the weak through participatory grassroots community-based (NGOs); challenging unequal political, economic and social structures; empowerment integrates language and meanings; identities and cultural practices; forces that enhance power to act with others to fight for change in hostile and difficult environments. It also encapsulates moving away from the limits of a preoccupation.

In the mid-1990s, mainstream development agencies began to adopt the term empowerment and the language of participation in decision making process, partnership and many more. This reflected a growing concern that gender equality would not be achieved unless women could challenge toxic patriarchy and global inequality and inequity. To achieve this, women need to gain self-reliance and internal strength in order to determine choices in life and to influence the direction of change, through the ability to gain control over crucial material and non-material resources.

Consequently, there is need for a collective vision, a set of strategies and new methods for mobilizing political will and empowering women (and men) to transform society. Activists and Scholars from the global South argued that, there is need to precisely understand power and empowerment, that empowerment must be seen as ‘the process of challenging existing power relations and gaining greater control over the sources of power’. It requires political and collective action against cultural as well as national and community power structures that oppress women and some men, and consequently, transformative political action. They further argued that empowerment is more than participation in decision making; it must also include the processes that lead people to perceive themselves as able and entitled to make decisions.

Therefore, women’s empowerment cannot be regarded simply as the need to bring women into established power structures. Because it ignores the deeply held resistances facing marginalized groups around the world, and the vague attitudinal and structural barriers to collective action (power with) and generative power to support gender equality.

Empowerment as a whole and particularly as part of the struggle for gender equality around the world, continues to be a development concern, both for policy and implementation; and inclusion of men and masculinity as well as attention to cultural differences and economic empowerment is a welcome expansion of the term and key to addressing gender empowerment in an increasingly complex, global and unequal world.

Suleiman Lawan Kolomi, (M.Sc. in view)
Department of Sociology
Bayero University, Kano
suleimankolomi@gmail.com