WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT - A STUDY ON THE ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT OF WIDOWS IN NAIROBI, KENYA

Abstract: As international actors and public policies have centered the ambition of gender equity, empowerment has become a buzzword within international development. With its original conceptualization suggesting a process of redefining the structures of power, feminist scholars have noted how empowerment has been robbed of its central element; power. Originally meant to be a political concept enabling marginalized populations to access power, mainstream development actors have depoliticized the notion and reduced its broad conceptualization to its economic dimension. Additionally, the perspectives of women are absent in both research and development policies. By employing a qualitative research design the following study analyzes how widows experience an NGO-initiated economic empowerment project in Kibera, Kenya. Utilizing Kabeer’s (1999) theoretical framework, the study seeks to analyze the empowerment processes through Kabeers’ three dimensions of empowerment; resources, agency, and achievements. Through semi-structured interviews and discussions, the study found that the participants were able to exercise individual and collective agency over the material, cognitive and relational resources, to reach a variety of meaningful achievements, particularly by challenging the gender norms of women and widows. Yet, the project struggled to contribute to a meaningful, transformative change in the community, outside the realm of the project.