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The concept of women's empowerment is historically associated with national liberation movements throughout the world, the contributions of the American civil rights movement, and contributions of feminist movements in developing countries in Latin America and Asia. This concept focused on collective empowerment challenging the stereotypes about gender relations and was used, clearly and explicitly, in the 1970s in order to launch the struggle for social justice and equality between women and men, and facilitated through the establishment of economic, social and political structures. During the 1 99Os this concept lost its original transformational, and to a degree radical, concept, when it was linked to the ongoing transformations in the global economy and changes in the nature of the state and civil society, and to improvements at the level of development theories. Development discourse has focused on expanding women's options and levels of production as individuals, in most cases apart from the work programs of women's movements in the context of the state's withdrawal and abandoning of its responsibilities in the spheres of economic and social support.1
The concept began to regain its original contents slowly, particularly in the programs of international organizations. At the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, the issue of empowering people as basic individuals and groups was considered in the development planning.
Since the human being is the focus of the development process, the empowerment process seeks to help individuals realize themselves and their abilities and skills to improve their quality of life and to make strategic decisions related to their lives.2 The concept of empowerment is associated with power relations between men and women and their ability to access resources and control them. The origin of the term "empowerment" in the English language is rooted in the word "power," which includes control; accordingly, the process of empowerment can be understood in several levels.3
Different Forms of Power
Power over. This includes the concept of power relations from top to bottom, including relations of sovereignty and hegemony and domination versus subordination and submission and obethence. In this sense, this concept is based on intimidation and the threat of violence and requires constant vigilance to keep control. Confronting it requires the use of effective and negative resistance methods.
Power...