Paste your eIntroduction
The main argument of this paper is that progress towards gender equality and women's empowerment in the development and “transformative” agenda requires a human rights-based approach, and requires support for the women's movement to activate and energize the agenda. Both are missing from Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 3. Empowerment requires agency along multiple dimensions—sexual, reproductive, economic, political, and legal. However, MDG 3 frames women's empowerment as reducing educational disparities. By omitting other rights and not recognizing the multiple interdependent and indivisible human rights of women, the goal of empowerment is distorted and “development gaps” are created. To re-focus the post-2015 Development Agenda around human rights, we conclude by outlining an approach of issue-based goals and people-focused targets, which makes substantive space for civil society including women's rights organizations.
It examines the ‘de‐politicisation’ critique, arguing that, while participation may indeed be a form of ‘subjection’, its consequences are not predetermined and its subjects are never completely controlled.
This paper examines some of the critiques addressed to participatory development by critics such as Cooke and Kothari. It argues that criticisms of participation's theoretical coherence and of its lapse into a routinised praxis largely arise from an unavoidable ambiguity that is inherent in the concept of participation, this being the means/end ambiguity. Participation must function as a means because any development project must produce some outputs (therefore participation is seen as a means to achieve such outputs), but it must also function as an end inasmuch as empowerment is viewed as a necessary outcome. This ambiguity becomes contradictory when emphasis is laid on participation as a means at the expense of participation as an end. The article proposes ways of re‐emphasising the element of empowerment so that participation may function as an emancipatory strategy.
This paper offers a relational, multilevel perspective on gender equality and mainstreaming. It argues that single-level conceptualizations of equality within organizational or legal policy domain may not fully capture the multilevel and contextual nature of gender equality and mainstreaming. Based on a review of macro-level factors (e.g. laws, policies, and culture), meso-level factors (e.g. organizational interventions), and micro-level factors (e.g. intersection of gender with social class)
Gender equality is a human right NOT a female fight
Empowerment has become one of the most elastic of international development's many buzzwords according to the Cornwall and Rivas. Once used to describe grassroots struggles to confront and transform unjust and unequal power relations, it has become a term used by an expansive discourse coalition of corporations, global non‐governmental organizations, banks, philanthrocapitalists and development donors.
The article focuses on the implications of recent and past work in feminist theory, and on questions of masculinity, stressing the need to take account of the complex and variable nature of gender identities, and to work with men on exploring the constraints of dominant models of masculinity.
Cornwall and Rivas generally disregard (and perhaps diminish) the power that certain interventions can have for women (like micro-credit and education initiatives); categorising them as ‘enabling factors’ or ‘outcomes’ as opposed to being ‘proxies for empowerment’ (Malhotra et al. 2002 in Cornwall and Rivas 2015: 405). In other academic publications, Cornwall defines these interventions as ‘empowerment-lite’ which addresses ‘the symptoms but not underlying causes of power imbalance’ (Barder 2012: n.p.). Over all, Cornwall and Rivas argue that changing power structures for women is far more effective than merely helping women via material means (Cornwall and Rivas: 405-406). This seems to dismiss which the supposed benefits economic interventions.
Secondly, the argument’s theoretical underpinnings are based on questioning the way in which the term ‘women’s empowerment’ has been used, suggesting that although the concept was welcomed by the development sector, that it’s been ‘eviscerated’ (deprived of achieving its original purpose) (Cornwall and Rivas 2015: 396). Cornwall and Rivas argue that new ‘frames’ are needed to ‘connect and contribute to a broader movement for global justice’ (2015: 396). Their approach is a bit too idealist- as much as we would like an ideal world where a woman shouldn’t need to be separated from men to feel safe or be treated equally, it is also not possible to achieve that right now. As the saying goes, “Rome was not built in a day”, so must we also accept that it isn’t possible to achieve the ideal world right away but it is definitely something to aspire for.
Thirdly, Cornwall and Rivas argue their case by focuses on the discourse of women’s empowerment. They critique the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (United Nations 2005) by examining rhetoric, ‘buzzwords’ and the issues of the ‘goal-setting process’ (Cornwall and Rivas 2015: 406). They also critique the way that mainstreaming women’s empowerment often incorrectly places men as the ‘other’ (2015: 407). They failed to focus and/highlight on how policy action for women’s empowerment may exclude men hence paradoxical to the inclusion and non-discrimination ideal they highlight in their work.
Lastly, Cornwall and Rivas take a radical approach. They do this by challenging the way in which normative goals have been ‘lost in translation’, as they fail to address the ‘underlying structural basis for inequality’ (Cornwall and Rivas 2015: 410). In particular, the relations of power and its role in development.
Relations of Power in 21st Century
The article perpetuates a misconception that gender equality is a women’s movement but gender equality is about just that: EQUALITY! It is a liberation movement for all gender; each and every who has felt the burden of a gender stereotype or the pain of discrimination or the pressure to fit in an uncomfortable mound.
Cornwall and Rovas present a case where there seems to be a “feminine and masculine chaos”. They do not seem to look at gender and development from a 21st century lens and how power structures have shifted historically. I think it might be because our culture confuses men's desire for achievement and competence with the patriarchal desire for tyrannical power and that's a big mistake. Those aren't the same thing even a bit so and it's very inappropriate psychologically and sociologically to confuse them. our primary social hierarchy structures are fundamentally masculine and that's not the patriarchy well it's not the modern idea of the patriarchy. it's like where's the dominance here precisely what you're doing is you're taking a tiny substrata of ‘hyper successful men’ and using that to represent the entire structure of the society there's nothing about that that's vaguely appropriate. Their perception of power relations should not be viewed from a “male domination” perspective but a concept that has evolved that either gender can dominate a particular society or industry.
Conclusion
In summary, Cornwall and Rivas seem a bit conflicted because it’s unclear how a transformative agenda change could happen in the real-world. Regardless, their argument to change existing power relations certainly gives other feminist and/or gender centric scholars a valid reason to rethink their approach.
Neither economic development nor women’s empowerment is the magic bullet it is sometimes made out to be. In order to bring about equity between men and women, in my view a very desirable goal in and of itself, it will be necessary to continue to take policy actions that favor both men and women equally (Rights and freedoms applying to both equally), and it may be necessary to continue doing so for a very long time. While this may result in some collateral benefits, those benefits may or may not be sufficient to compensate for the cost of the distortions associated with such redistribution. This measure of realism needs to temper the positions of policymakers on both sides of the development/empowerment debate.
ssay in here…