Opening Minds, Improving Lives: Education and Women's Empowerment in Honduras

Introduction

1 Introduction The billboard catches my eye as I dash to the departure gate at the Newark airport. Half of a woman’s face—her dark brown skin, ovalshaped eye, and stoic expression—peeks out from under a bright yellow headscarf. The text scrawled across the black background reads, “I am powerful.” A blogger in Illinois reacts to the same image, which is part of the “I am powerful” campaign launched by the humanitarian organization CARE on International Women’s Day, 2006. She writes: “Our daily routine is composed of countless visual assaults. . . . Every once in a while, and I have to hand it to Madison Avenue, they come up with something that jolts you. . . . Care.org has been creating some very powerful ads and on an issue close to my heart: focus on women’s innate power in fighting global poverty.”1 Women’s empowerment is an issue that has gained increased attention in recent decades. According to representatives from CARE, the choice of women’s empowerment as a marketing campaign was the result of research that suggested that the concept of “women’s empowerment” resonated with women, echoing the comments of the blogger in Illinois. As CARE’s vice president for communications and marketing explained: “We did some research and we were able to confirm that empowerment, even as a general concept, was more compelling to women.” He continued: “Even if you weren’t talking about women’s empowerment specifically. If you take the old saying, ‘Give a man a fish, he eats for a day,’ men tended to say, ‘Yes, give them a fish! If he’s hungry, give him a fish!’ Women tended to resonate more strongly to the concept of, ‘No, no. Teach them to fish. Empower them and they can solve their own problems’ ” (Hicks et al. 2008). The notion of women’s empowerment, and empowerment more broadly, is now at the forefront of the international development agenda. In addition to CARE, other international organizations and declarations emphasize the importance of empowerment. For example, in September 2 Opening Minds, Improving Lives 2000, world leaders came together at the United Nations headquarters in New York to adopt the United Nations Millennium Declaration, a commitment to reducing extreme poverty around the world. The third of eight Millennium Development Goals is to “promote gender equality and empower women.”2 The term is also overused. Tony Proscio, author of the book In Other Words: A Plea for Plain Speaking in Foundations, pokes fun at the term “empowerment”: “To establish one’s bona fides as a person concerned about the poor, the disenfranchised, or even ordinary people in general, it is essential in every setting to use empowerment, as early (and, in some circles, as often) as possible. The coiners of empowerment invested it with only the broadest meaning, perhaps to make it usable in nearly every context —or anyway, that has been the effect” (2000, 30). Indeed, the word “empowerment” is used in a variety of contexts, and it appears in unlikely places. It is the slogan for Bank of America’s campaign for recruiting new students, “Empower yourself!” An electric company claims to be “empowering New England.” The act of brushing your teeth can also be empowering, if you use Colgate’s “empowermint” toothpaste. Purchasing my morning bagel and coffee at Dean & DeLuca in New York City, I can add a “shot of power” to my bill to help empower women in Africa. In a New Yorker article about First Lady Michelle Obama’s decision to wear sleeveless clothing that shows off her arms, we learn that even fashion is empowering: “Michelle Obama reminds women that they can make a place for vanity in their lives, and that, when they do, a little fashion can be supremely empowering” (Givhan 2009). Empowerment is a fuzzy concept, but the idea resonates—empowerment is a good thing. But what, exactly, does empowerment entail? In what ways is the woman on the CARE billboard powerful? How can people be empowered to solve their own problems? The questions linger, and while “teach them to fish” is a catchy metaphor, the role of education in empowerment is unclear. What kind of education, if any, can empower individuals to take charge of their lives and work to improve their families, communities, and society at large? This is the central question this book addresses. In this book, I draw on more than a decade of qualitative research to examine the relationship between women’s education...