Document Library

Key Text Conceptualising Empowerment and the Implications for Pro Poor Growth

Author: Rosalind Eyben, Naila Kabeer, Andrea Cornwall
Date: 2008
Size: 37 pages (296 KB)

Access full text: available online

Summary

This Institute of Development Studies paper proposes a framework to enable the empowerment of the poor to be conceptually understood and operationally explored. It examines the different facets of ‘social’, ‘economic’ and ‘political’ empowerment. International development actors often lack awareness of much that is already known about these issues. These are the conceptual tools for identifying complex and mutually dependent processes that development actors can support and facilitate for achieving pro-poor growth.

Empowerment is fundamentally about power. It is about the power to redefine our possibilities and options and to act on them, the power within that enables people to have the courage to do things they never thought themselves to be capable of, and the power that comes from working alongside others to claim what is rightfully theirs.

Staying poor in today’s world is an effect of world history that adversely incorporates poor people into the current global political economy. It is also an effect of locally embedded processes through which individuals or groups are wholly or partially excluded from full participation in the society within which they live.

As a conceptual tool, three kinds of empowerment that are inter-connected and iterative can be identified:

Economic empowerment is the capacity of poor women and men to participate in, contribute to and benefit from growth processes on terms which recognise the value of their contributions. There are lessons from the field that can provide insights into how empowerment can be facilitated. They relate to a) the promotion of the assets of poor people; b) transformative forms of social protection; c) the ‘decent work’ agenda’; and d) voice and organisation for economic citizenship.
Social empowerment is taking steps to change society so that one’s own place within it is respected and recognised on the terms on which the person themselves want to live, not on terms dictated by others.
Political empowerment contributes to pro-poor growth through increasing equity of representation in political institutions and enhancing the voice of the least vocal so that they can engage in making the decisions that affect the lives of others like them.

Consequently, the DAC Network on Poverty Reduction (POVNET) may wish to pursue the following ‘intermediate outputs’ or aspects of empowerment in relation to the role of international aid:

Learning and sharing knowledge about empowerment in policy areas related to pro-poor growth: This area of work concerns on the one hand pulling together and disseminating what is already known and, on the other, developing tools for thought in relation to understanding how policy choices are made for supporting processes of empowerment.
Integrating empowerment into aid instruments: Development agencies and governments cannot empower. The most they can do is to facilitate and support people’s own efforts. POVNET can build on its already established and recognised role of exploring with donors and their partners in aid recipient countries how aid can be optimally used for this purpose.
Strengthening donor capacity for supporting empowerment: The pro-poor growth agenda has important implications for the way donors support partner countries. It is not “a business as usual agenda” and “more of the same” will not be sufficient. If donors can change the way they do business, they will find that empowerment delivers aid effectiveness.

Access full text: available online

Source: Eyben R., Kabeer N., Cornwall A., 2008, 'Conceptualising Empowerment and the Implications for Pro Poor Growth', Paper prepared for the DAC Poverty Network by the Institute of Development Studies, Brighton