Empowerment of women Postcolonial feminist theory challenging mainstream feminist perspectives

Abstract

The idea of empowering women as a strategy for poverty alleviation, has become increasingly popular with institutions, such as the UN and the World Bank, as well as with NGO:s. Today there is not one definition of what empowerment should mean and the concept is used in many different contexts and is the stated goal of various development strategies. Therefore it is interesting to take a closer look at how different actors, actually understands the concept of empowerment. The main aim of this thesis then is to investigate how mainstream feminist theory and postcolonial/postmodern feminist theory understands the Third World Woman and the concept of empowerment. Importantly, it will be argued that the theories are based on different assumptions of the Third World Woman. Western mainstream feminist theory tends to take western culture and society as reference point in their studies while postcolonial feminist theory challenges the universality of western norms. The case studies of the Grameen Bank and SEWA are used to further illustrate how the different understandings of empowerment might support different strategies.