Cognitive-Semantic Mapping of Empowerment
- Objective: To understand how men and women define women’s empowerment.
- Preparation/Materials: Different colored idea cards, markers, CARE’s women’s empowerment framework and sub-dimensions. If using visual methods for women or men to depict an empowered woman, it would be helpful to have flipchart paper, idea cards, colored markers. Before working with communities, the research team should meet and discuss how to define the translation for ‘empowerment’ within context.
- Participants: Women and men, in separate groups or individual interviews across well-being, class, clan/ethnicity or other grouping, as appropriate to the context and study question.
Steps
Following introductions, the facilitator begins by writing the term ‘women’s empowerment’ on an idea card and placing it in the center of the room.
The facilitator then asks respondents to define women’s empowerment, writing each characteristic on an idea card.
Once characteristics have all been listed, participant(s) then work to rank characteristics and group them into categories. During this time, the facilitator probes to understand, and note, how respondents prioritize and understand different areas of women’s empowerment.
The facilitator then asks participants to define the opposite of women’s empowerment. Similar to the previous step, the facilitator again writes down each characteristic described on idea cards of a different color.
The participant(s) then worked to rank characteristics and group them into categories.
Finally, the research team asked respondents if there are other terms that are similar to empowerment but are not the same. For this term, respondents again mapped out the characteristics and categories of this term. The facilitator then probed into the distinction between this term in comparison and in contrast with ‘women’s empowerment.’
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