Prof. Serene Khader (CUNY Graduate Center and Brooklyn College) will be spending the week with us virtually, including mentoring and seminar discussion. On Friday, March 19, she will give a public lecture on ‘The Dark Side of Women’s Empowerment.’ Prof. Khader is known for her incisive diagnosis of the problem of adaptive preference in development and feminist theory and for her innovative approach to feminist thought in Decolonizing Universalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethic.
The Dark Side of Women’s Empowerment
Serene Khader
Jay Newman Chair in Philosophy of Culture and Professor of Philosophy, Brooklyn College
Professor of Philosophy and Women’s and Gender Studies, CUNY Graduate Center
Friday, March 19, 2021
4:30 P.M. EST
Development interventions that “empower” seem to be resulting in significant increases in women’s workloads without increases in, and sometimes even decreases in, their status or power. In other words, empowering women is starting to look a lot like burdening them. I argue here that this burdening of women is a predictable result of the conception of empowerment as choice or agency. Dominant conceptions of empowerment characterize empowerment as the increase in a person’s ability to do what they choose. Yet conditions of gender equality and poverty structure women’s options such that choosing, doing, and doing more are often both women’s best option and modes of disempowerment.
Accessing the Lecture
Join by Zoom at the following link: https://carleton-ca.zoom.us/j/94671920224
Meeting ID: 946 7192 0224