WHAT IS EMPOWERMENT? - ARTE - 2025

The empowerment or empowerment (empowerment in English), is a method that currently applied to diverse groups at risk of social exclusion.

It finds its origin in popular education, a concept developed by the theorist Paulo Freire in the 1960s.

However, the concept of empowerment took hold in the 1980s, with Dawn being key, a group of women researchers in the field of gender exclusion. This group carried out a methodology whose main objective was to reinforce capacities and resources in all areas of women's lives. This methodology was intended for both individual and group change.

Rappaport, in 1984, defines empowerment as a level of process and mechanisms through which people, communities and organizations gain control over their lives. In this definition, the process and the results are closely related to each other.

Since then and until today, empowerment is used in many groups at risk of social exclusion or vulnerability. Although it is true that the group in which more use is made is women, there is also empowerment in many others, such as people affected with drug addiction problems or to increase cooperation for development in the social sphere and community.

What is empowerment?

Empowerment is a set of strategies and methods that aim to help various marginalized groups or at risk of social exclusion. To do this, an attempt is made to increase their power and their access to both symbolic and material resources with which they increase their social influence and get to participate more actively in a social change to meet their needs.

The individual has to have an active role to act in any cooperation program. Thus, the individual goes from being a passive subject to an active subject in her development.

In short, it is making an individual as a person or a disadvantaged social group powerful or strong.

Empowerment works at the social and group level

On many occasions, these groups are not able to see their own rights, capacities and give importance to their interests. Empowerment will help them to be aware of all this, and for them to realize that their opinions, capacities and interests are also useful and necessary in group decision-making.

That is, empowerment works to give strategies to the person both at the individual level and at the group level, obtaining a multidimensional level. At the individual level, the levels of self-confidence, self-esteem, and the ability to be aware and take into account personal needs are worked on.

These groups have a significant lack of these factors; Their self-esteem is usually very deteriorated by the recurrent cultural messages of oppression and worthlessness that they have internalized about themselves. This process of raising awareness of their capabilities, therefore, is often long and difficult.

Regarding the social or group level, it is also vitally important to work on it. It is important that people at risk of social exclusion participate and defend their rights before society, since they tend to have similar objectives.

It is essential to emphasize that they are aware of the situation of inequality and injustice they suffer and make them see that they have the option and capacity to seek change.

Next, I leave you a video that in my opinion speaks very well of the concept of empowerment, of the awareness of our capacity for change, self-knowledge and self-esteem to achieve our autonomy and objectives:

The 3 types of powers

The author Friedman, in 1992, considered that empowerment is related to having access to and control of 3 types of powers. These are:

• Social power: be aware of our opinions and interests to expose them at the social level.
• Political power: related to access to decision-making that will influence their future.
• The psychological power: it is the one that enhances our personal capacities, the development of the self and of the confidence in ourselves.

Areas in which empowerment is used

Today there are many areas where empowerment is used. Next, I will go on to describe the areas in which empowerment takes place the most.

• Personal empowerment: it is the process by which the ability to make decisions is acquired and take responsibility for our decisions in life. In this way, we can feel that we are who we are at the wheel of the car. Knowing that we are the ones who can change things, take action and decide about our lives.

• Organizational empowerment: the way in which employees take the initiative for company decisions is worked together with the leaders to establish company policy. For this, the senior managers of the company must share their authority so that employees can also take part of the responsibility in decisions.

In addition to sharing responsibility for decision-making, seniors must develop strategies for staff development so that they can hone their particular talents and interests.

It is essential that the information is available to employees. Giving employees sufficient information allows them to better understand the current situation, improves trust in the organization, and increases the responsibility that employees take towards the company.

• Empowerment in marginalized groups: marginalized groups tend to lose self-confidence by not being able to meet their basic needs. This lack of confidence and self-esteem leads them to develop mental problems that make them more disabling.

With empowerment, it is sought that these groups, either through direct help or through non-marginalized people, can achieve basic opportunities. In addition, it also involves promoting the development of skills for proper self-reliance.

• Empowerment for health: WHO defines empowerment as a process through which people acquire greater control over decisions and actions that can affect their health.

Within this, there is individual empowerment, which would be intended for the individual to have the ability to make decisions and have control over their personal life. On the other hand, we speak of community empowerment, in which the individuals of a group are involved to gain greater influence on the determinants for an improvement in health and quality of life in their community.

• Gender empowerment in women: this empowerment includes both individual and collective change, in which we want to achieve a variation in the processes and structures that define the subordinate position of women as a gender. This empowerment seeks to increase women's capacity for self-esteem, their self-confidence and develop their ability to influence social changes. Thus, they will acquire the ability to organize with other people to achieve a common goal.

Empowerment process

The empowerment process has the ability to enable a person to have greater autonomy, decision-making power and influence over others. This change has to take place at 3 levels: cognitive, affective and behavioral.

Therefore, it is not surprising that individual empowerment has a reciprocal relationship with the collective. A person who has high self-esteem, decision-making capacity and developed and self-confident autonomy, will participate more frequently in collective decisions showing their opinions and interests.

In the same way, a person who enjoys a society in which information is clear and accessible to everyone, with access to available services and in which their interests are taken into account, will increase their individual empowerment.

In short, these are some of the characteristics that every empowerment process should have:

• Have access to the tools, information and resources necessary to make an appropriate decision.
• Have your own power of decision.
• Acquire responsibility for the results.
• Ability to exercise assertiveness in group decision-making, influencing them.
• Have a positive thinking and possess the ability to make changes.
• Ability to improve our self-image and self-esteem, overcoming the stigmatization imposed by society.
• Involvement in a process of change and constant personal growth.
• Strong sense of self and individuality, power comes from the authenticity of the person as a one-of-a-kind individual.

Factors that favor and promote empowerment

• Access to information: providing a person with information is giving him power. A society in which information is open and within the reach of all groups, allows these groups to have greater knowledge about everything that happens around them (at the political, social, rights, etc.) level.

This facilitates their power of decision and negotiation to take advantage of the rights that may be granted to them. The same happens at the level of individual growth, since the more information and tools an individual is provided, the more aware of their possibilities they can be.

• Open and transparent institutions : institutions with these characteristics promote that information is available to all individuals, so this will also promote equity in the distribution of available resources.

• Social and participatory inclusion: the more integrated a group is, the greater its participation in decision-making.

• Local organizational capacity: the mechanisms of a community allow individuals to work together and mobilize the resources they have at their disposal to solve their problems. When they manage to solve their problems, their self-esteem increases and their belief that they have a real capacity to make changes before their circumstances increases as their feeling of social support increases.

Factors that hinder empowerment

• Low self-esteem: in excursion groups, self-esteem is usually dependent on the self-esteem of others. In childhood, the mandates of the elderly function as the expectations to be fulfilled. If even in adolescence and adulthood these mandates of others continue to be our expectations to be fulfilled, this is a sign of oppression.

This, without a doubt, affects the self-esteem of the person, since our expectations are not taken into account but those of others. Therefore, it is a point that will make empowerment difficult and on which more emphasis will have to be placed to modify it.

• Fear: fear is another feeling that makes it difficult for us to carry out our intentions and desires, paralyzes us and blocks our creativity. Fear is sometimes related to messages of rejection that we have received from our early age. Therefore, many of our fears are nothing more than fantasies that we have elaborated and that prevent us from acting to carry out our decisions. Psychological and / or social fears tend to interfere in our mind with messages such as: "I have to..", "I can't..", "I'm not capable..".

Fear is paralyzing in the ability to solve problems, but thanks to empowerment we can be aware that what we are feeling is fear, recognize it in order to manage it and handle it effectively.

Verbalizing fear (whether spoken or written) helps us to get rid of that feeling and, at the same time, we can find help in our interlocutor. If we express our fear in writing, it will help us gain autonomy and self-knowledge about what is happening to us.

• Not being able to say NO: saying "no" can be seen in our culture as a lack of affection or a mode of rejection on our part towards others. However, learning to say "no" in situations that we really don't want to give in is important to developing good empowerment. In this way we will become a "for others" to be able to think "for ourselves". It is about understanding that this does not mean a rejection of others, but of listening more to ourselves.

In conclusion, we can emphasize that with the tools of empowerment we empower the person for greater autonomy, self-knowledge of their capacities and decision-making power in matters at the individual or social level to satisfy their needs and interests.

References

1. Craig, G. and M. Mayo (eds.) (1995), Community Empowerment: A Reader in Participation and Development, Zed Press, London.
2. DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era) (1985), Development, Crisis and Alternative Visions: Third World Women Perspectives, Delhi.
3. Parsons, RJ, Empowerment: Purpose and Practic Principle in Social Work, Social work with groups, 2/14: 7-21, 1991
4. Rowlands, J. (1997), Questioning Empowerment, Oxfam, Oxford.
5. Mcwhriter, EH (1991), "Empowerment in Counseling", in Journal of Counseling and Development, No. 69.
6. Moser, C. (1989), "Gender Planning in the Third World: Meeting Practical and Strategic Gender Needs", in World Development, vol. 17, no. 11.
7. Friedman, J. (1992), Empowerment. The Politics of Alternative Development, Blackwell Ed., Massachusetts.
8. Bernoff, J. Social Technographics: Conversationalists get onto the ladder. Empowered.