ABSTRACT
This paper is concerned with the relationship between empowerment, citizenship
and gender justice. I see these as signposting distinct but interrelated pathways
of social change in women’s lives which can, but do not necessarily, overlap. I
understand women’s empowerment to have an irreducibly subjective compo-
nent. Whatever else, it must entail changes in women’s consciousness, in the way
they perceive themselves and their relationships with others. It thus begins with
GENDER JUSTICE AND DEVELOPMENT: LOCAL AND GLOBAL
individual change. Gender justice concerns the institutional arrangements that
govern society including, but not only, its legal system*and the extent to which these promote the fair treatment of men and women. Struggles around gender
justice are then struggles around notions of fairness at the institutional level. I
will be arguing that ideas about citizenship offer an important bridge between
these two processes of change because they help to mediate the translation of
individual notions of selfhood into socially recognised identities.
