Defining Women's Empowerment

Irena showing Sarita some pictures.

I came to India to work with Vidya's Munirka women's group with the intention of empowering the women of this community, a vague and ambiguous objective that I've had to revisit and redefine time and time again for the past six weeks. After working with the women and meeting with several women's movement activists and NGOs, I feel that I've begun to understand what the goal of empowering women entails, and how versatile one must be in order to reach such a goal.

After all, who gets to define empowerment? 

My inner struggles began as I tried to answer this question for myself as it applied to the slum women I have been working with. I felt discouraged in the beginning as I realized it was nonsensical to try to impose my definition of empowerment on these women. Their  lifestyles, goals, and ideas about progress and development remained separate and distinct from my own reality in so many ways.

Raj Kumari and Lata taking notes in class.

Feeling that I had what it took to be an empowered female, I considered what aspects of my life I should try to pass on to them...I thought about my dreams, my aspirations, my individual goals and accomplishments; and I quickly realized that a 21-year old university graduate, who had the luxurious option to leave her family and career behind to travel to a distant and foreign country in order to volunteer abroad had little in common with the women of the community center I was working with.

I was stumped.

I realized that language has such an imprisoning effect on humanity. We are so bound by words, concepts, and ideas that must constantly be redefined, or else risk losing applicability and substance altogether.

And so I began to explore the idea of empowerment and what it meant to me...which led me to the question of what empowerment would mean for these women. It was unrealistic, after all, to expect that in spite of the undisputed language barrier between me and the women, I would be able to convey fully what my purpose here was to them...I was still exploring this myself. I emerged myself in the lives of the women. We joked, gossiped, and shared in each others insecurities and triumphs. I learned of their homes, their families, the areas in which they felt accomplished and unsuccessful. We expressed ourselves without words...as we weren't able to even if we wanted because of the English-Hindi barrier...but with signs and tones and styles and passion and emotion.

A few of the girls (left to right): Pooja, Neetu, Krishna, Arti, Manju, and Soniya

And I learned and felt that global feminism...or a specific global agenda for women everywhere...is an oversimplification of a complex reality. As Jaya ji put it the other afternoon, "One cannot be too drastic." One must be malleable in defining the needs of individual and unique women because the truth of empowerment it's so distinct for each woman...and the way to empower a woman is to go to her, and learn of her individual needs.

I saw this idea in practice in Munirka. Empowerment for Pooja, a 14 year old girl I worked closely with who is neither literate in Hindi or English, meant being able to write her own name, and her best friend's name. In Pooja's life, empowerment meant having confidence in herself, and learning that she mattered to someone outside the context of her family. To Pooja, being able to differentiate between B and D and C and G was enough to bring a smile to open her up to the possibilities before her. Before we began working together, she rarely ever communicated with anyone outside of her best friend, Shabnam. Now she has become more vocal and expressive. My point is, empowerment is different for everyone...and so creating a one size fits all formula for empowerment, development, activism, feminism, or any other concept is a distorted impression of reality.

Mamta unscrambling the letters of the alphabet and putting them in order.

Once I realized this, I began to have more success with the women at Munirka. I began to see the results I was looking for all along: to see the girls pursue their dreams whatever they may be...and feel valued by their community, and subsequently, their world at large. It's a comparatively small accomplishment to teach a woman to recognize her ABCs, but if it give her value, than it's a tool of empowerment.

Other women had more ambitious goals..and this is to be expected. But to me, being empowered as a woman means I have the freedom to do things that are relevant to my life without being looked down upon or dismissed. It means I can better myself and my circumstances in the ways that I desire (whether I am a CEO, a mother, a political activist, a housewife, a doctor, a daughter...in the city or as a village woman). No matter what path a woman chooses in life...empowerment means that they get to choose what matters most to them. No one else should try to define what empowerment should mean to somebody else.

My individual goals. My dreams. My beliefs. My career (or lack thereof). My life...

This is my power.