Empowerment

About: Empowerment is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 42112 publications have been published within this topic receiving 752953 citations.

The Politics of Black Economic Empowerment in South Africa

Abstract: Since 1994, the black majority African National Congress (ANC) government has pursued several important goals at the same time, sometimes emphasising equity and redistribution of wealth, and sometimes advocating rapid economic growth and corporate investment. These goals have been difficult to reconcile with each other. They have led the government to fluctuate in its black economic empowerment (BEE) policies, shifting between a moderate and radical redistribution of assets. Generally, however, the government has been cautious in implementing BEE, provoking a controversy around it, partly because it has benefited mainly politically-connected individuals rather than the mass of the previously disadvantaged, and partly because South Africa's corporate sector continues to be dominated – managed and owned – by the minority whites. ANC leaders have feared the consequences on economic growth and investment if white business is obliged to relinquish large ownership levels to black investors. The government has c...

The Relational Model of Women's Psychological Development: Implications for Substance Abuse

Abstract: Over the past two decades, new conceptualizations of women's psychological development have been evolving which emphasize the centrality of relationships in women's lives (Belenky et al., 1986; Gilligan, 1982; Jordan et al., 1991; Miller, 1976). This relational perspective has sought to describe development from women's perspective, using language and concepts derived from women's experience. Since women in this culture have been the "carriers" of certain aspects of the total human experience, specifically carrying responsibility for the care and maintenance of relationships, this model attempts to articulate the strengths as well as the problems arising for women from this relational orientation. Theorists and clinicians at the Stone Center at Wellesley College have been developing this theoretical perspective as a base for creating relational models of healing and empowerment for women.

Das mobilizações às redes de movimentos sociais

Abstract: The reality of social movement is quite dynamic, and theorizations do not always follow this dynamism. With globalization and the information age, the social movements in several countries, including Brazil and Latin America, are more diversified and complex. Therefore, many paradigmatic or hegemonic explanations from the last century are in need of revision or updating vis-a-vis the emergence of new social subjects or political scenarios. This study begins by elucidating organized civil society's new forms, aiming to register the multiple types of collective action in the new millennium. From this comprehension the study seeks to explore the diversity of identity of the social subjects, the transverse nature of demands for citizen's rights, the forms of activism and the empowerment through networking and, finally, the political participation of network organizations.

Forty years of gender research and environmental policy: Where do we stand?

Abstract: Synopsis Forty years of gender research has ensured that gender is an important category that needs to be taken into account in environmental policy and practice. A great deal of finances and attention are currently being directed to gender in development and environmental organizations. At the same time, as gender research has become more sophisticated and theoretically strong, there is also frustration among academic researchers as well as practitioners and policy makers that it appears to have had a marginal effect on environmental practice on the ground. Policies have turned to gender mainstreaming, attempted to include women and other marginalized social groups in environmental management and markets. Change has been mixed. Mainstreaming can become a technocratic exercise. The assumption that competing interests can be negotiated by adding women to organizations for environmental governance, in disregard for social relations, is problematic. Stereo-types about women and men, sometimes buttressed by gender research predominate in policy and programs. Inclusion in markets offer new options but can further curb women's agency. Contradictions arise - as gender becomes a part of the official machinery, when women are regarded as a collective but addressed as individuals in programs and when the focus is on the governance of gender with little attention on the gender of neoliberal governance. Yet, support for ‘gender programs’ has also led to unintended openings for empowerment. It is clear that the meaning of gender is far from settled and there are intensified efforts to define what ‘gender’ is in each context. I discuss the renewed interest in gender and what this engagement with power might mean for gender research, policy and practice and where we might go from here.