Pathways
National Discourses on women’s empowerment - Enabling or Constraining Women's Choices
2014 - 2011
Lead Researchers: Maheen Sultan , Sohela Nazneen
Researchers: Firdous Azim , Naomi Hossain
This research project sought to compare and contrast conceptualisations on women's empowerment in the development area, women's organisations, and in cultural spheres such as the media and religion. Researchers on this project worked closely with those engaged on the theme of changing narratives of sexuality. These differing concepts were defined and analysed while trying to establish how one has influenced the other.
Resources For This Project
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National Discourses On Women’s Empowerment: Enabling Or Constraining Women’s Choices, IDS Working Paper 368
This paper explores how perceptions and narratives around women’s empowerment have evolved in Bangladesh from 2000 to date. It studies the concepts of women’s empowerment in public discourse and reviews the meanings and uses of the term by selected women’s organisations, donor agencies, political parties and development NGOs. By reviewing the publicly available documents of these organisations, the paper analyses the multiple discourses on women’s empowerment, showing the different concepts associated with it and how notions such as power, domains and processes of empowerment are understood by these actors. It also highlights how these different discourses have influenced each other and where they have diverged, with an emphasis on what these divergences mean in terms of advancing women’s interests in Bangladesh. …
