ABSTRACT

Empowerment has become a largely unquestioned development goal of such diverse and contradictory development institutions as the World Bank, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Oxfam and many smaller non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Initially seen as a necessary ingredient for challenging and transforming unequal political, economic and social structures, empowerment was regarded as a weapon for the weak – best wielded through participatory, grass-roots, community-based NGOs. However, empowerment is a flexible concept, and by the mid-1990s mainstream development agencies had begun to adopt the term. While not abandoning their belief in liberal economic policies, the language of participation, partnership and empowerment increasingly entered mainstream development discourse (World Bank 1995; Elson and Keklik 2002). While the word might be the same, meanings varied, and mainstream institutions and their practitioners for the most part envisioned empowerment as a means for enhancing

efficiency and productivity within the status quo rather than as a mechanism for social transformation (Parpart, Rai and Staudt 2002).