Identifying and Describing Empowered Women

  • Objective: To understand how men and women define women’s empowerment.
  • Materials/Preparation: 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.

Steps

In focus group discussions or in depth interviews with women and men representing a cross-section of the community, the research team probes into the following questions to understand community definitions of women’s empowerment:

Describing an empowered woman

  • How would you describe a strong woman? What are the things a strong woman can do? How would you describe her?
  • When I ask you to think of an “empowered woman”, who comes to mind? (Encourage them to think of women they know, women in movies or popular culture, women in history). What makes these women “empowered”? (Explore qualities of self-efficacy, leadership, fearlessness, representing other women, standing up for herself; as well as incidents that might have demonstrated how empowered a woman is/was.)

Assessing empowerment in herself

  • How different is this empowered woman’s life from yours? Why? What makes you “empowered” as a woman, as a wife/partner, as a village/community member, as a citizen?
  • Do these make you feel like a strong or an “empowered” woman (Why? Why not?)
    • Having knowledge about how to protect yourself from harm or disease
    • Knowing where to go or get essential services (education, legal services, food, treatment etc.)
    • Knowing how to talk about sex with your partner – whether or not to have sex, when to have sex
    • Having control over and access to money
    • Being able to go where you want without asking for permission
    • Being consulted or making decisions (re: what?) in your home or in the community
    • Being self-confident
    • Being treated with respect as a woman by your partner, family and the community
    • Knowing what your legal rights are and knowing where to go if they are denied to you
    • Decisions related to marriage (who to marry, paying dowry) and child-bearing (when to have children, how many to have)
    • Knowing how to protect yourself from violence
    • Being able to decide what groups to belong to or not
  • From these qualities, what qualities do you have or would you like to have? (Explore – what stands in the way of acquiring these qualities or what makes it easier)
  • When is it easier / more difficult to have these qualities of do these things? Why?
    • With partner (husband or client)
    • With relatives (in-laws, parents, siblings)
    • With friends
    • In a women’s group
    • In the community
    • At special events (spokesperson, participant)

 

Variations

Variation 1

Identifying Powerful Women

  • When asking women to identify powerful or ‘empowered’ women in their social context, in some cases, facilitators then list the names of these women and ask respondents to rank them in terms of their empowerment.
    During this process, the facilitator probe into the categories and indicators that help differentiate women from one another, according to the group, and key priorities areas within their definitions of empowerment.

Variation 2

Rather than asking participants to describe an empowered women, some research teams ask respondents to draw a picture to illustrate an empowered women as well as another illustration to depict themselves. The illustrations are then used as a basis for discussion in terms of:
  • The elements included and a comparison of differences or changes between the empowered woman and the participant herself,
  • The importance of the dimensions of empowerment within the illustration, and
  • Who in the village comes closest to that image.

Variation 3

Rather than discussing several examples of ‘empowered’ women, CARE Tanzania’s research team discussed a single role model of an empowered woman with participants to focus the discussion on her characteristics. Questions were as follows:
  • Please describe a person you admire very much and who you would like to be like.
  • What symbol would you choose to represent him/her? Please share why you chose this symbol.
    • Probe→ Why do you want to be like him/her?
    • Probe→ What do you have already that can help you to become like this person?
  • What is there within your community that can help you to become like this person? What needs to change so that you can be like this person?

The team discussed the lives of respondents’ children:

  • What about your children? What would you wish your daughters’ lives to be like and why?
  • Would you like your daughter's life to be different to yours?  If so, in what way and why?  If not, what do you think is particularly good about your life that you would like to be the same for her?
  • What would you wish your sons lives to be like and why?
  • At the moment what are the lives of children (girls and boys) in your community like? What needs to change so that they can have the kind of life you desire for your own children?

Responses were then analyzed in comparison with the women’s empowerment framework and its sub-dimensions.

Related Tools

View more tools related to:

 

Resources

  • CARE USA (2006). Global Research Framework for CARE’s Strategic Impact Inquiry on Women’s Empowerment.
  • CARE USA (2006). Ecuador Case Study.
  • CARE Ethiopia (2006). Strategic Impact Inquiry on Women’s Empowerment in Relation to FGC Elimination Project in Awash.
  • CARE India (unpublished). Strategic Impact Inquiry 2005 Annex of Tools.
  • CARE Tanzania (2006). Strategic Impact Inquiry into Women’s Empowerment: The Open Inquiry.
  • M Logarta, S Heng, R Long (2008). Gender, Sex and the Power to Survive: the impact and implications of empowering women at risk of HIV/AIDS: Project on Sex Workers’ HIV/AIDS Reduction, Advocacy, Facilitation and Empowerment (SAFE). CARE Cambodia.
  • F Maiga, AK Coulibaly, RF Ngampana, M Fofana, O Keita, B Diallo and A Koné (2006) Facilitation Guide for In-depth Interviews and Focus Group Discussions with Women. CARE Mali.