ABSTRACT
The Women's Research Network and the spin-off Women's Theory Group were established in 1992 in response to the feeling that as women postgraduates our development was compromised by power structures that acted to stifle and inhibit our intellectual exploration and expression. Since the group started within the English Department and is still mainly organized by English students, it has been difficult to maintain a multi-disciplinary perspective. The insidious co-optation of ideas of self-development and self-help and their translation into the language of entrepreneurship must make us use such phrases as empowering ourselves with care. And it is within this context of an already established structure of interlinked power relations, that we need to consider the question of empowering ourselves. Engaging with issues of empowerment involves inherently problematic dynamics; these were as evident in the workshop session as they have been in the Women's Research Network (WRN).
