Women empowerment

Q. What do you mean by the term "Women empowerment"?

The World Bank's Empowerment and Poverty Reduction Sourcebook defines empowerment in its broadest sense as the "expansion of freedom of choice and action" (Narayan, 2002). United Nations (2001) defines "empowerment as the processes by which women take control and ownership of their lives through expansion of their choices."

The term empowerment has been widely used in the last 10 years. "Empowerment means that people, especially poorer people, are enabled to take more control over their lives, and secure a better livelihood with ownership and control of productive assets as one key element" (Chambers 1993).

Women empowerment is one of the burning issues in the developing countries in recent time as in many developing countries; women are still the most vulnerable group of the society. So government of Bangladesh has taken different program to empower the women especially the rural women. Mayoux's (2000) definition of empowerment relates more directly with power, as "a multidimensional and interlinked process of change in power relations". It consists of:

• 'Power within', enabling women to articulate their own aspirations and strategies for change.
  
• 'Power to', enabling women to develop the necessary skills and access the necessary resources to achieve their aspirations.
  
• 'Power with', enabling women to examine and articulate their collective interests, to organize, to achieve them and to link with other women and men's organizations for change.
  
• 'Power over', changing the underlying inequalities in power and resources that constrain women's aspirations and their ability to achieve them. These power relations operate in different spheres of life (e.g., economic, social, political) and at different levels (e.g., individual, household, community, market, institutional).
  

Women's empowerment depends on a range of factors including psychological, cognitive, economic, social and political dimension.