EMPOWERING WOMEN

The OHCHR - Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has defined empowerment as the process "of giving people the power, capacities, capabilities and access needed to change their own lives, improve their own communities and influence their own destinies." It is a process which enables a person to understand the workings of power so that they can deal with questions of existing power and exercise control over the sources of power.

Empowerment has multiple, interrelated, and interdependent dimensions - economic, social, cultural and political. It can be understood in relation to resources, perceptions, relationships and power.

Empowerment, in the context of IFUW's Study and Action Programme involves enabling women and girls to hold legitimate positions of authority and to influence others - in other words to become leaders. Globalization has a negative impact on women when it pushes women to a marginal position, violating their human rights. Women must find ways to empower themselves to fight imbalance in society, and to participate equally in the on-going process of development. When women feel they can operate in society on the same terms as men, then we can call women empowered.

Even though globalization has been identified and encouraged by the West with its economic and technological power, it is not synonymous with westernization. Empowerment means very different things to different groups of women, and varies according to the level of development in a particular society. The potential for empowerment varies, both according to region and economic position. Every NFA should endeavour to decide for itself what empowerment means for women in the context of its own culture.

IFUW believes that the equal partnership of women in the economic, as well as social and political spheres is essential to the humanizing of globalization.

IFUW national federations and associations should promote:

• the full implementation of all human rights conventions especially CEDAW
• the strengthening of national institutions for protecting women's rights
  
• the allocation of budgets for providing education and training for women and girls
  
• the provision of special funds for science and technology (IT) education for women
  
• training programmes which develop gender sensitive skills
  
• the adoption of special measures for ensuring equal educational opportunities for women and girls and for ensuring equal participation of women in administration, policy making and economic decision making
  
• the introduction of legislative and administrative reforms to give women full and equal access to economic resources - including the right to own land and other property, to credit, to natural resources and to appropriate technology
• the adoption of measures to modify the social and cultural behavioural patterns of men and women

IFUW national federations and associations can develop projects to:

• network with other women using the new information and communication technology
• train girls in the new technologies and in global awareness
• discuss leadership, its meaning and functions for women, as well as strategies
  to enable women to assume powerful positions in society
• develop personal self-esteem
• study religious, social and cultural practices and traditions and the impacts that they have on women that diminish their human rights
• study the term 'empowerment' in the context of one's own traditions

Without change in the power relations between men and women
empowerment cannot be achieved!

	International Federation of University Women 10 rue du Lac, CH-1207 Geneva, Switzerland Tel: (41.22) 731 23 80 Fax: (41.22) 738 04 40   E-mail: info@ifuw.org