Title: Gender and power: six links and one big opportunity
Headings: Gender and power: six links and one big opportunity
21st May 2015
Gender and power: six links and one big opportunity
Diana Koester
'... development work could be more politically smart and more effective if it addressed this blind spot'
'... gender and power are intrinsically linked; understanding this can help us understand both concepts better'
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Diana Koester
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Content: They are key gatekeepers for women’s political participation, but their male-dominated cultures often make them inaccessible to women. In Burundi and Kosovo, for example, female politicians have complained that important party decisions were taken in bars – spaces women often can’t access. Gender shapes how we understand what ‘power’ is in the first place. The widely accepted definition of power is getting someone else to do what you want them to do. Arguably this reflects a specifically male experience of the world: a place inhabited by hostile ‘others’ with whom, to survive, you are forced to forge some kind of social relationship. Women, particularly in their socially assigned roles of wife and mother, may more often understand themselves as being in continuity with the people around them rather than in opposition. They often aim to build capacity in others rather than to dominate. This would suggest an alternative idea of power: the capacity to transform and empower yourself and others.