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Empowerment
I am free and I have some power; my partner has the same: sovereign d ecisions are freedom and power. —Urban man, neighborhood of Olzstyn, Poland
a sense of identity and a position in the community structure. (Whether this is equal or favorable is a different matter.) As such, this system, and how it is changing, determines what is possible to imagine and to achieve. We also look at the enabling local conditions that make it possible to pursue and realize aspirations. We use two tracks to assess factors and processes gleaned from the focus groups’ understanding of empowerment. We first parse out women’s and men’s perceptions of the different factors that increase their power and freedom, and the role that gender norms play in their interpretations of what creates empowerment (chapter 4). In chapter 5, we explore the local context in more detail and how it influences the processes and outcomes of agency, especially those elements over which individuals may have no control, such as market forces, local governance, and civic action, and the norms for women’s inclusion and leadership in these public spaces. Overall, in our sample, women more often than men reported becoming more empowered and spoke of gaining more influence and freedom of action in either their domestic or public roles. Men’s changes in their sense of power and freedom, however, were far more tightly tied to their role as providers and to the health of the local economy. Our assessments of the focus groups particularly reveal that women’s sense of empowerment and the factors shaping it can be very different from men’s, even in the same community. This discrepancy in large measure has to do with gender norms. Although we observe many new norms slowly taking hold, when reviewing all the responses in aggregate, important gender differences still persist in aspirations and in perceptions of, and access to, opportunities. These differences were reflected in the men’s and women’s evaluations of their capacities to act and empowerment trends for their own gender. As Kabeer (1999) and Mahmood (2001) point out in different ways, empowerment does not always or necessarily result from deviations from the norms. While it is true that complying with norms may lead to increased status, and that this may be antithetical to autonomy, the actual outcome depends on the context of women’s social relations and individual histories. Alkire (2009, 4), in a discussion of approaches to assessing agency, explains that, “people who enjoy high levels of agency are engaged in actions that are congruent with their values.” A strong desire for harmony between values and behaviors is common in local understandings of what brings power and freedom, and the values often embody strong gender dimensions. In chapter 5, we connect the men’s and women’s assessments of trends in empowerment for their own gender to data gathered about local markets and state and civic institutions. From this, we note that the perceived empowerment On Norms and Agency • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-9862-3