Preserving Women’s Empowerment: Advocating for Feminist Participatory Action Research

While women’s empowerment has been embraced as a global development objective, studies have underscored the declining usefulness of this approach. This declining usefulness is attributed to, first, the instrumentalisation of the women’s empowerment approach where this once-radical agenda has been harnessed to the prevailing approach in global development: pursuing gender equality through women’s market inclusion. Second, its declining usefulness is underscored by practitioners’ preference not to use the term in their work because of its current associations, which they have found to be counter to its objectives. In light of this trend—and in considering new trajectories for Gender and Development—this chapter explores how feminist participatory action research (FPAR) can sustain the objectives of the women’s empowerment approach, as it was originally conceived. The chapter outlines the shared conceptual underpinnings and praxis of the women’s empowerment approach and FPAR. It then analyses the funding landscape for FPAR, describing the donors involved and the types of projects pursued, as well as their impacts. Third, the chapter identifies three leverage points in promoting FPAR for those advocates seeking to advance alternatives to women’s market inclusion in gender equality programming.