Abstract
If the problem with earlier, women-specific development programs (such as the Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas [DWCRA]) was operationalization, not conceptualization, then what is entailed in operationalizing another “beautiful” concept such as MS (a program of education to empower poor women) at the grassroots? If the grassroots bureaucracy has been primarily responsible for making policy-based concepts operational in the material realities of target subjects but has neither the technical training nor the political commitment necessary to actualize such operationalization, then the high rate of disuse of programs in India cannot come as a surprise to anyone. Also, it should not be surprising that the monies allocated for operationalizing programs locally are deliberately mis-allocated by the local bureaucracy, preferably to themselves and their immediate kin. For example, under the DWCRA credit schemes, select beneficiaries were invited to credit trainings and were to be paid a stipend for their participation. However, the beneficiaries complained that they were never paid the full stipend amount.1 They were paid half and the other half went into the pockets of the local adhikari-in-charge. If the core principle of DWCRA was facilitating women’s access to “skill upgradation” and “credit facilities” so that women could engage in income-generating activities to supplement their current incomes, in the women’s experience such access was made particularly difficult by bureaucratic procedures (e.g., in applying for a bank loan) and corruption.2
The biggest problem with DWCRA was that the concept paper was beautiful, but when you went to the field, it was just a set of government orders cast in stone with their own set of rules and regulations. So what we said was that India has come up with beautiful ideas along the line, but the need is to move from conceptualization to operationalization [emphasis mine].
—VR, feminist academic and consultant for MS program, from an interview conducted in Delhi in 2002
Empowerment was never conceptualized as entitlement to information or even women’s land rights. The rights perspective was completely lacking in our orientation … [Furthermore] why do you think they shut down [MS] here in Chitrakoot? There was a ten lakh gaman [embezzlement] here. In MS Banaras and MS Saharanpur, there was again ghaplaa [fraud] that was close to four lakhs. People were being thrown out. But the maximum ghaplaa was in Chitrakoot. From the top to the bottom, everyone admitted that they took their cuts. Therefore, what is empowerment? Is an empowered woman a corrupt adhikari [official]? What are we talking about? [emphasis mine].
—MK, first coordinator for MS-Chitrakoot, from an interview in Karwi, Chitrakoot district, Uttar Pradesh, in 2003
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
bell hooks, Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics (Cambridge, MA: Southend Press, 2000), 20.
Shulamit Reinharz, Feminist Methods in Social Science Research (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 51.
Georg Simmel as quoted in Shulamit Reinharz, Feminist Methods in Social Science Research (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 289.
Irene Dabrowski, “Developmental Job Patterns of Working-class Women” (Qualitative Sociology, 6, 1983), 29–50.
Laura Bohanan, a.k.a Elenore Smith Bowen, Return to Laughter: An Anthropological Novel (New York: Double Day Publishers, 1954/1964).
Peggy Golde, “Odyssey of Encounter,” in Women in the Field: Anthropological Experiences, Peggy Golde, ed. (Chicago: Aldine, 1970), 67–96
Louis Easterday, Diana Papademas, Laura Schorr, and Catherine Valentine, “The Making of a Female Researcher: Role Problems in Fieldwork” (Urban Life, 6, 1977), 333–348.
Biopolitics, argues Aihwa Ong in channeling Foucault, refers to a “series of regulatory controls exerted on the population and on individuals in order to harness and extract life forces,” Aihwa Ong, “Neoliberalism as Exception, Exception as Neoliberalism,” in Neoliberal as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty, Aihwa Ong (North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2006), 13.
Shulamit Reinharz, Feminist Methods in Social Research, 1983
Karen McCarthy Brown, “On Feminist Methodology” (Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 1, 1985), 76–79
Sheryl Ruzek, The Women’s Health Movement: Feminist Alternatives to Medical Control (New York: Praeger, 1978).
Judy Wajcman, Women in Control: Dilemmas of a Workers’ Co-operative (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983), xi.
Judith Stacey, “Can There Be a Feminist Ethnography?” in Women’s Worlds: The Feminist Practice of Oral History, eds. S. Gluck and D. Patai (1991), 111–119.
Kamala Visweswaran. Fictions of Feminist Ethnography (Minneapolis, London: Minnesota University Press, 1994), 1–203.
Linda Kent, “Fieldwork That Failed.” In Philip de Vita, The Naked Anthropologist (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Press, 1992), 23.
Barbara Cruikshank, “Revolutions Within: Self-government and Self-esteem,” in Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neoliberalism, and Rationalities of Government, Andrew Barry et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 241.
De Tocqueville as quoted in Barbara Cruikshank, “Revolutions Within” (1996), 241.
Nivedita Menon, “Women and Citizenship,” in Wages of Freedom: Fifty Years of Indian Nation-State, ed. Partha Chatterjee (New York, New Delhi, London: Oxford University Press, 1998), 243.
Radha Kumar, History of Doing (1996), 103 .
Dana Broft et al., “Together We Are Powerful: Voices from the Mahila Sanghas,” Report of the Indo-Dutch Evaluation of the Mahila Samakhya Programme. (The Hague: July 1997), 10.
Barbara Cruikshank as quoted in Nikolas Rose, “Governing ‘Advanced’ Liberal Democracies” (1996), 60.
Monique Deveaux, “Feminism and Empowerment: A Critical Reading of Foucault.” Feminist Studies 20–22 (1994), 225.
Leela Dube, “Caste and Women.” In Anupama Rao, ed. Gender and Caste: Issues in Contemporary Feminism (New York: Zed Books, 2005), 241.
Barbara Cruikshank, The Will to Empower (1999).
Copyright information
© 2011 Shubhra Sharma
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sharma, S. (2011). “Empowerment Was Never Conceptualized as Entitlement”: Problems in Operationalizing a “Feminist” Program. In: “Neoliberalization” as Betrayal. Comparative Feminist Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230119208_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230119208_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-38249-1
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-11920-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave Media & Culture CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)