Abstract:
This paper attempts to determine the relationship between women’s participationand their empowerment. Empowerment is a process whereby women become able to organize themselves to increase self-reliance and to assert their independent right to make choices and control resources. Empowerment in this study was adopted from Rowlands (1997) and Schulz, et al. (1993) which has two levels, individual and community. Participation was adopted from the Cohen and Uphoff’s (1988) model. The data was collected from 195 women who involved in eleven NGOs in the City of Shiraz, Iran. The survey method with standard questionnaire was applied to answer the research objective of the study. The result showed that the level of empowerment among the women was at the moderate. Level of participation also tends to be high among the women. Finally, the result revealed that the participation has positive contribution to empowerment of women.
Machine summary:
"Empowerment, Participation, Women, Individual Empowerment, Community Empowerment KEY WORDS: INTRODUCTION The Beijing Platform of Action (1995) identified inequality between men and women in the sharing of power and decision-making at all levels as one of the critical areas of concern for the advancement of women and achievement of equality as a matter of human rights and a condition for social justice.
According to Mc Whirter (1991) empowerment is a process by which people, organizations or groups who are powerless (a) become aware of the power dynamics at work in their life context, (b) develop the skills and capacity for gaining some reasonable control over their lives, (c) exercise this control without infringing upon the rights of others and (d) support the empowerment of others in the community.
The first section measured the demographic information of respondents and family background; Second section consisted of a list of items related to individual empowerment included self esteem, decision- making ability, and control over life.
The study measured individual and community empowerment, and women’s participation based on five point likert scale.
In this study, the construct of empowerment consisted of two level individual and collective and some indicators such as self-esteem, decision- making ability, control over life, community awareness, working together and participation in NGO’s program.
For individual level, the elements were self-esteem, decision- making ability, and control over life, whereas, for the community level, the elements were working together, participation in NGOs’ program, and community awareness.
The mean, standard deviation, minimum and maximum score of three elements of community empowerment (به تصویر صفحه مراجعه شود) Participation in NGOs’ program was measured by 5 items five point likert scales with the mean score of M=17."