Empowering women

More than one way?

תקציר

Female empowerment programs are central to the working of most international development agencies. Increasing number of studies, however, note that the women's rights NGOs supported by Western development agencies are failing to win popular support among ordinary women, especially in Muslim societies. By studying the factors shaping growing demand for female madrasas (Islamic seminaries) in Pakistan, and comparing the conception of female empowerment promoted through these madrasas and their popular appeal with that of donor-funded women's rights NGOs, this study identifies two reasons for the latter's failure to win popular support: (1) an unwillingness to respect and accommodate alternative conceptions of womanhood; and (2) a failure to recognize that incremental steps at reform, which teach the women to negotiate increased space for themselves by working within existing societal structures, can be more empowering for women in their daily lives than exposing them to Western conceptions of gender equality, which are unattainable in the given socioeconomic constraints. For the development agencies and women rights' NGOs, it is important to engage with the leaders and students of the female madrasas to understand the practical relevance of this education for the girls, rather than assuming it to be a product of ideological indoctrination perpetuated by the male elite and therein finding a justification to confront it. Developing context-specific indicators of women's empowerment is important for understanding the appeal of alternative conceptions of womanhood.