Women and Work

Abstract

Empowerment has as its primary goal an equitable re-distribution of power and resources. Empowerment seems to be a potentially important strategy to improve the status of women. The strategy includes group mobilization the use of consciousness raising techniques in women to make them aware of gender discrimination in their personal lives, a recognition of women’s three major roles- productive, reproductive and community work, a rejection of top-down strategies as the only way to accomplish social change and a belief to organize for ‘themselves’. In the late 1980’s empowerment became a popular issue- both in academic and non-academic literature. It was linked to health, development, modernization and strategies for survival.