Pathways of Women’s Empowerment: Global Struggle, Local Experience, A Case Study of CARE-International’s Women’s Empowerment Project in Zanzibar

Abstract

In the field of International Development, increased attention has been given to the concept of women’s empowerment as it has been recognized as a potential driver for change. Classified as a global struggle, commitments to this concept have been at the core of many development interventions, whether they be a small NGOs working in a single community or large-scale international aid agencies with presence all around the world. Despite its international recognition, women’s empowerment has been largely left unquestioned within development practices and especially with regards to the impact it may have on local beneficiary communities. This thesis will address how universal ideas such as this one become meaningful in the local setting through a case study of CARE-International’s Women’s Empowerment in Zanzibar project that was implemented from the years 2008-2011. In applying Sally Merry’s (2006) concept of vernacularization, as a theoretical framework, it will be shown that international aid organizations do not simply adapt women’s empowerment to the local arena. Instead, various local actors are involved in a dynamic process of translating, negotiating, and making the concept more meaningful to the beneficiaries and, thus, cause a new hybrid understanding of women’s empowerment to emerge. This new concept draws more extensively on local institutions, knowledge and practices that have been inter-weaved with Islamic practices which play an important role in the lives of Zanzibaris. This thesis will illustrate how NGO culture converges with and diverges from the local communities and expose the realities that exist within the greater development discourse.