The Politics of Women's Empowerment: The Transformative Struggles of KAMER (Women''s Center) against Violence

Abstract

Violence against women continues to prevent them from participating in social, economic, political, and cultural life as active subjects. A shift in gendered power relations is one of the key mechanisms for women to transform a life of violence into a life without violence. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the possibilities of feminist politics based on women's empowerment, and its transformatory potential in women's struggle against violence with a particular focus on a grassroots women's organization, KAMER (Women's Center) from Turkey at two levels: on the level of individual women who are active in women's organizations and on the level of an organization. I will discuss how the individual and collective empowerment strategies of women from KAMER open up a multi-dimensional and transformative space that is productive of lasting changes in women's lives. How do women transform a life full of violence into a violence-free one? What are their empowerment mechanisms? A woman’s organizing around the shared grounds of oppression and subordination as well as violence lead women to question their lives as the first steps of their own empowerment processes. Therefore, they become aware of the political-ness of their private experiences. Becoming aware of one's internalized oppressions along with the experiences of violence plays a crucial role on women’s empowerment and it is a recurrent theme of this study. With the recognition of women’s own powers coming from within and with the implementation of transformatory feminist politics based on women's collective and individual empowerment, it becomes possible to create a new world free of violence.