Re-Envisioning Empowerment: From Rhetoric to Transnational Feminist Action

• In Event: Global Trans-Actions: Theorizing Empowerment in a Transnational Context

Abstract

The term “empowerment” was claimed by feminists to signify the challenging task of shifting social power in favor of marginalized populations. But the rhetoric of empowerment has also come to serve a range of neoliberal agendas. In this work we critically assess the concept of women’s empowerment, exploring how and why the term has been co-opted and divested of meaning and political content by governments, NGOs, donors and the media. Conceptualizing the ways empowerment translates across histories, contexts and cultures, we ask how empowerment might be more responsibly localized, taking into account non-hegemonic knowledges and diverse experiences of power and oppression.

Presenters

• Mehra Shirazi, Oregon State University

• Nancy Staton Barbour, Oregon State University