Women Awakening to the Epitome of Power

The change in development policies from the focus on women's active role in production as a means of more efficient development, to the approach of women's empowerment through women organizing for greater self-reliance, has also meant a change in policies for the enhancement of women's economic role. Considering the role of agency in assessing empowerment of women is because of the many examples in the literature of cases in which giving women access to resources does not lead to their greater control over resources, where changes in legal statutes have little influence on practice, where political leaders do not necessarily work to promote women's interests. Thus, while resources — economic, social and political- are often critical in ensuring that women are empowered, they are not always sufficient. Without women's individual or collective ability to recognize and utilize resources in their own interests, resources cannot bring about empowerment. Understanding empowerment in this way means that development agencies cannot claim to empower women, rather they can provide appropriate external support and intervention, which can however be important to foster and support the process of empowerment i.e., act as facilitators. Governments can ensure that their programs work to support women's individual empowerment by encouraging greater participation, acquisition of skills, decision-making capacity, and control over resources for women. Therefore, an inclusive approach whereby the planners working towards an empowerment approach must develop ways of enabling women themselves to critically review their own situations and participate in creating and shaping the society is suggested."The women's movement at its deepest is not an effort to play "catch-up" with the competitive, aggressive "dog-eat-dog" spirit of the dominant system. It is rather, an attempt to convert men and the system to the sense of responsibility, nurturance, openness, and rejection of hierarchy that are part of our vision."