ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the problematic concept by exploring three questions: Under what conditions and how do international agencies coopt the strategy of empowerment? In the face of mounting and unpayable international debts, Third World countries have had to seek assistance from the International Monetary Fund in order to obtain the foreign exchange needed to maintain minimal levels of production and consumption. Power is inherently linked with empowerment, a concept which is becoming problematic. An analysis of structural adjustment from a feminist perspective helps to illuminate the linkages between the economic crisis and its social, cultural, and political consequences. If a working definition of feminism is a consciousness of all the sources of women’s oppression and a commitment to change this, then women need power to be able to change things. Women’s ability to cope tends to act as a cushion against even more devastating consequences which might provoke action or reaction on the part of poor communities.
