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Can research on empowerment be in itself empowering to those that take part in it? If so, how might that research be constructed and conducted, and what kind of empowerment might researchers and research participants experience? This article explores a series of research initiatives in Salvador, Brazil, that sought to integrate transformative feminist principles into the study of women's empowerment as part of an international research programme involving researchers from Latin America, the Middle East, South Asia, West Africa, the UK and the USA. We reflect on debates about epistemology and methodology that gave rise to the design of these projects and on the research journeys that these designs brought into being. Contrasting research projects with very different foci, methodologies and participants, the article explores insights from these initiatives for feminist research on empowerment. …

To celebrate their 25th anniversary, the Nucleus of Women’s Interdisciplinary Studies based at the Federal University of Bahia, Salvador held a National Symposium on Women and the Constitution from the 16 to 17 October 2008. The meeting provided feminist reflections on the legal legacy of the Brazilian feminist movement’s political lobby – also known as the ‘lipstick lobby’, twenty years after it was originally formed. The meeting was supported by the National Secretariat for Women’s Policies. …

What do you do if the government you’ve worked so hard to elect reneges on their promises once they get into office? And your attempts to name and shame them in letters to the newspapers aren’t getting results? Take to the streets! But the protest Cecilia Sardenberg, Ana Alice Costa and their colleagues from the  Núcleo de Estudos Interdisciplinares sobre a Mulher (NEIM) organsed to declaim Bahia’s Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) Governor Jacques Wagner for breaking faith with what his campaign promised the women of  Bahia wasn’t an ordinary kind of protest. This was, after all, Bahia and the build up to Salvador’s famous carnival had begun. …

NEIM held a two day conference on Dialogues of Empowerment from 21 to 22 June 2007 in Salvador, Brazil. Among the issues discussed were women and the politics of the Middle East and women and economics and development. The debate which was held in the auditorium of the Municipal Council rooms in Salvador included Suha Barghouti from the NGO Network of Palestine, and Andrea Cornwall and Naila Kabeer from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. Ana Alice Costa, Terezinha Goncalves and Maria de Lourdes Schefler from NEIM provided facilitation. …

KPFA Radio Station’s Women’s Magazine (Berkeley, California) interviewed Cecilia Sardenberg on her thoughts as a feminist on President Dilma Rousseff’s election in 2010 and her hopes for the future. Cecilia who is a member of President Rousseff’s PT (Worker’s Party) herself has high hopes for what President Rousseff can achieve despite her lacking the dynamic charisma of the outgoing President Lula. When Rousseff was the Minister for Energy she brought in a gender equity programme which is now in existence across the major energy companies in Brazil. Although she hadn’t previously been associated with the feminist movement, Cecilia believes that she is going to be doing more of this in going forward. …

Cecilia Sardenberg, national coordinator of the Observatory for the Implementation of the Maria da Penha Law, was in Brasilia on 6th August to attend the launch of the ‘Best Practice in the Implementation and Dissemination of the Maria da Penha Law’ Award. The event, held in the auditorium of the Secretary of Policies for Women (Federal Goverment) is part of the celebrations to mark the third year since the sanctioning of Maria da Penha Law (11.340/06) which punishes domestic and family violence against women. Maria da Penha Fernandes, the woman who gave her name to the law, attended the launch and will take part in the presentations for the first award. …

On 19-20 June 2007, NEIM co-hosted an international seminar on ‘Women’s Pathways into Power: International Experiences of Affirmative Action’ at the Brazilian National Congress, in collaboration with AGENDE (Actions in Gender, Citizenship and Development), Casa da Mulher do Nordeste’s Mulher e Democracia (Women and Democracy) project, the network of women representatives in the National Congress, the Commission on Participatory Legislation (CLP), the Commission on Social Security and the Family (CSSF), the Commission on Human and Minority Rights (CDHM) and the Commission on the Constitution, Justice and Citizenship (CCJ) of the Chamber of Deputies. The seminar, which took place within the Chamber of the National Congress, discussed and analysed experiences of the use of affirmative measures to enhance women’s political participation in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Speakers included Julie Ballington of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Rwandan MP Juliana Katengwa, IDS researcher Naila Kabeer and Palestinian women’s rights activist, Suha Barghouti.  …