Pathways of Women’s Empowerment

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Pathways of Women’s Empowerment Research Program is an international research and communications program made up of activists and academics who explore and seek to bring about positive changes in women's everyday lives. It involves research institutions located in universities in Ghana, Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt as well as at IDS, Sussex and UNIFEM. The funding for the program is mainly provided by UK's Department for International Development.

The research under this program uses the entry points of voice, work and body to determine the processes and conditions that allow women to challenge inequality. The aim is to identify and make visible previously unobserved pathways of change in each country in order to bring about radical shifts in policy and practice.

The Pathways of Women’s Empowerment Research Consortium investigates what enables women, individually and collectively, to empower themselves, how they sustain these changes, and how development agencies' policies support or hinder this process. BDI has undertaken this project because it considers the empowerment of women a crucial factor in establishing equitable gender relations in society.

The Pathways program is presently being funded from 2007-2011. During this time, the program has engaged with audiences through workshops, lectures, conferences, as well as through popular culture mediums, such as film, photography exhibits and television talk shows. Other outputs of the project include newspaper and magazine articles, research reports, policy briefs, academic papers, etc.

For more information about the Pathways Research Programme Consortium, please visit: www.pathwaysofempowerment.org.

Project Themes

The research projects at Pathways address the following four themes:

• Building Constituencies for Gender Justice
• Changing Narratives of Sexuality
• Conceptualising Empowerment
• Empowering Work

Programme Coordinator

Maheen Sultan

Contact

Samia Afroz Rahim

Research Associate, BDI

samia.rahim@bracu.ac.bd

Telephone # 8824051, ext. 4099, 4070