Voices of Empowerment: The Role of Kansas City Based NGOs in Immigrant Women's Experiences of Empowerment

Abstract

In this dissertation, I examine how non-governmental organizations (NGOs), situated in the global North, contribute to immigrant women's experiences of empowerment. Oftentimes NGOs are hampered by neoliberal cutbacks in social services. Consequently, these organizations rely more and more on financial support from larger international organizations and foundations, which creates more bureaucratized and hierarchical organizational structures that lead to unequal relations of power between the organization and its clientele. These unequal relations of power impede the organizations' ability to effectively provide services and perform functions of empowerment. Given the constraints these organizations face, I examine if NGOs have addressed these problems, and to what extent they have restructured their organizations so that the immigrant women have a more active and participatory role within the organization and within their community. Drawing upon interviews with forty immigrant women participants and NGO staff members, I find that that the three Kansas City based NGOs in this study have devised innovative and creative ways to counter these challenges so they can more effectively serve their immigrant women clients and contribute to the immigrant women's process of empowerment.