Social Agency Of Low- Income ‘Young’ Women in Gaborone City, Botswana

Abstract

Empowerment should be a bottom-up process driven by a detailed understanding of how the disempowered sections of society view and respond to their own livelihood situations. The concept of social agency has brought a new perspective to the empowerment of women and other disempowered sections of society such as ‘the’ youth. This paper presents findings of a study which investigated how low-income ‘young’ women in Botswana exercise their social agency to improve their livelihood situations. The findings show that these ‘young’ women are indeed exercising their double social agency (both as women and as youth) to improve their livelihoods both in practical and strategic terms. They do not only demonstrate high sense of entrepreneurship but they are also becoming strategic in self-social positioning within their complex socio-cultural contexts. Although they are exercising their social agency in many different ways their main concern is to enhance livelihood situation of their families.