Population Reports

CONTENTS

          Chapters
  1. The World Takes Notice
  2. Intimate Partner Abuse
  3. Sexual Coercion
  4. Impact on Reproductive Health
  5. Threats to Health and Development
  6. Health Providers Play a Key Role
  7. An Agenda for Change

HIGHLIGHTS

Population Reports is published by the Population Information Program, Center for Communication Programs, The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, 111 Market Place, Suite 310, Baltimore, Maryland 21202-4012, USA

Published in collaboration with:
CHANGE 6930 Carroll Avenue
Suite 910
Takoma Park
Maryland 20912, USA
Phone: 301/270-1182
Fax: 301/270-2052

The Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE) is a research and advocacy organization that seeks to integrate concern for gender equity and social justice into international health policy and practice. CHANGE staff can be reached by e-mail at change@genderhealth.org or at http://www.genderhealth.org.


Volume XXVII, Number 4
December, 1999

Series L, Number 11
Issues in World Health

Empowering Women and Girls

Empowering women and girls is not only a worthy goal in its own right but also a key strategy for eliminating violence. Women will never escape violence as long as they are financially dependent on men and derive their social value exclusively from their role as wife and mother. Legal codes and customary practices in many parts of the world still treat women as second-class citizens, denying them the right to own property, to travel freely, and to gain access to economic and productive resources. In virtually all countries women are underrepresented in positions of leadership, and their specific concerns are rarely reflected in public policy. As a result, women frequently lack the power necessary to make basic decisions and informed choices about their own health or sexuality (442).


Alice Payne Merritt, JHU/CCP
In Bolivia girls march to celebrate the International Day of the Child. Empowering women is not only a worthy goal in its own right but also a key strategy for eliminating gender-based violence.

Empowerment is generally viewed as a long-term process, occurring at the international, national, community, and individual level. Its goals are to:

  • Eliminate laws that discriminate against women and children,
  • Strengthen women in leadership and decision-making,
  • Increase access to education for women and girls,
  • Increase women's access to and control over economic resources,
  • Increase women's access to health information and women's control over their own bodies,
  • Improve women's self-esteem and sense of personal power.
Worldwide, networks of women's groups are working to achieve these goals through grassroots activism and lobbying at a political level to change discriminatory policies and practices. Women's organizing has achieved some impressive gains. For example, in the last decade 24 Latin American and Caribbean countries have reformed laws related to domestic violence, largely due to pressure from women's groups (346, 480).

In addition, thousands of NGOs are working to instill a greater sense of entitlement among women via human rights education, legal literacy programs, gender training, and other small-group efforts. In Nepal, for example, the Asia Foundation sponsored human rights workshops in 1998 for 90,000 rural women to educate them about their rights and to encourage collective action. In the Muslim world the Sisterhood Is Global Institute runs similar workshops for women. Their manual, Safe and Secure: Eliminating Violence Against Women in Muslim Societies, uses case studies to spark discussion of issues such as child marriage, honor killings, and spousal violence (4). According to the institute, “Women must reclaim and re-interpret their culture in order to reach the goal of self-empowerment” (417).


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