Women's Empowerment: Challenges and Contradictions

Prof. Andrea Cornwall (School of Global Studies, University of Sussex)

Women's empowerment rose up the development agenda over the last decade, transforming a narrative that represented women as victims of subordination into a story of heroic survivors whose empowerment would bring myriad developmental benefits. This presentation will explore the changing contours of discourse on gender in development, and will focus on how the bifurcation of the field into a focus on "girls and women" and "men and boys" further marginalises a focus on the structural bases of inequality. It will draw on work conducted as part of an international research programme on women's empowerment, Pathways of Women's Empowerment, and on recent research examining discursive shifts within the field of Gender and Development and their implications for gender justice.

Andrea Cornwall is a political anthropologist who specializes in the anthropology of democracy, citizen participation, participatory research, gender and sexuality. She has worked on topics ranging from understanding women's perspectives on family planning, fertility and sexually transmitted infection in Nigeria and Zimbabwe, public engagement in UK regeneration programs, the quality of democratic deliberation in new democratic spaces in Brazil, the use and abuse of participatory appraisal in Kenya, domestic workers' rights activism in Brazil and sex workers' rights activism in India.

Organiser: Gina Heathcote

Contact email: gh21@soas.ac.uk

Contact Tel: 020 7898 4367