ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how “gender empowerment” is conceptualised in the practices of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) working with migrantised women and girls in Austria, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Poland. It combines a brief genealogy of the concept with findings from the ReIncluGen project, based on rapid organisational ethnography, focus groups and photo-voice interviews with 15 CSOs and over 150 participants. The analysis situates empowerment within institutional frameworks and lived realities, showing how policies often translate it into narrow and utilitarian terms—centred on autonomy, financial independence or access to services—while overlooking its collective and transformative potential. CSOs frequently operate with implicit understandings of empowerment, shaped by funding constraints, policy pressures and national contexts. Their practices emphasise safe spaces, trauma support, rights awareness and social participation, though often in fragmented or isolated ways. Women's accounts, by contrast, reveal empowerment as an ongoing and situated process, rooted in autonomy, freedom of choice, access to rights, resilience and collective support. This chapter argues for reframing gender empowerment as multidimensional, intersectional and relational. It contributes by recentring the problematisation—distorted by homogenising or paternalistic representations—towards the standpoint of migrant women and girls themselves, with direct implications for CSO practices and policy frameworks.
