Lately I have been struggling with this idea and concept of empowerment. It seems simple enough but I have been having a hard time accepting the title of an empowered women/mother.
The term empowerment covers a vast rare landscape of meanings, interpretations, definitions and disciplines. When dealing with the women’s movement empowerment means to promote the self-actualization or influence of one’s self. In short, empowerment is the process that allows one to gain the knowledge, skill-sets and attitude needed to cope with the changing world and the circumstances in which one lives.
Other examples of how women in particular feel empowered in today’s society include:
- Having decision-making power of one’s own
- Having access to information and resources for taking proper decision
- Having a range of options from which you can make choices (not just yes/no, either/or.)
- Ability to exercise assertiveness in collective decision making
- Having positive thinking on the ability to make change
- Ability to learn skills for improving one’s personal or group power.
- Ability to change others’ perceptions by democratic means.
- Involving in the growth process and changes that is never ending and self-initiated
- Increasing one’s positive self-image and overcoming stigma
- Increasing one’s ability in discreet thinking to sort out right and wrong (Wikipedia.com)
If you could sum up empowerment in one sentence, what would it be. How in your life have you felt empowered lately. If you could offer other women advice on how to tap into their own empowerment abilities what would that be?
