Women's empowerment through NGO interventions: A framework for assessment

Empowerment of women is high on the agenda in development plans and policies. NGOs have proved to have the potential to facilitate the process of empowerment among women. In this paper an attempt has been made to arrive at an operational definition of empowerment based on a literature review. The definition encompasses a few key elements such as power, autonomy and self-reliance, entitlement, participation, awareness development and capacity building. For a proper understanding of the process of empowerment, a systems view is presented in which all the relevant inter-linked elements have been analysed, such as the external agency (NGO), target group, development project/programme, immediate environments of the target group and external agency, and the macro-environment in which the target group and the NGO exist. Such a systems view would throw light on the differential impact of similar NGO initiated projects and processes on different target groups/communities. Further a seven-step process of assessment of women's empowerment is discussed within the systems framework. The steps are-assessments of the macro-environment, the external agency environment, the external agency, the target group environment, the target group, the development programme/ project and lastly integration of the assessment process. Such a framework will help the organisations involved in the design, implementation and evaluation of development projects from the point of view of understanding, incorporating and assessing empowerment related issues at the grassroot level.