“Let’s
Empower Women”, that is the slogan we hear all the time from many women
organizations. Although it is a great concept and one that must be one of the
main goals in this endless fight of women and equality, it is also a peculiar
one. It almost is like the concept of the “magic wand” and how it is in the
hands of the beholder and with one spin can magically solve the problem. It comes
across as an outer element not an inner element.
This idea of
liberating and empowering women has generated from the western societies. As we
have witnessed in the past two decades, the west has invaded many countries
with the claim of liberating and freeing the people of those nations in the
name of “war”, and we are all witnessing the disastrous results of those
invasions. Systems cannot change by only an outside force or only an inside
force. Systems change by the force of a mixture of both outer and inner
elements.
I have
worked with groups of women from a diverse background in the past few years,
especially women from refugees and immigrant population. The groups were all
focused on the concept of “empowerment”, but empowerment was defined as the
already existing skills and abilities within those women, but also how the
social learnings have covered them and given a false identity to the women. The
work was aimed towards gaining access to those internal abilities and skills,
and at the same time gaining insight of what are the forces to make women lose
those internal abilities and strengthens. And last but not the least step was
how to gain it all back. This is one of the very lost concepts in the issue of
empowering women. Often, our own internal interpretations of who we are is the
main force of how we are in our lives. And often those internal interruptions
have been influenced by our social learnings and the impact of our environmental
learnings. For those very reasons, the interpretations are not the real
identity and thus taking us to a weakening path. This becomes the core element
of many dysfunctionalities in our lives, e.g. staying in unhealthy
relationships, having co-dependencies, staying in unhealthy work environments
and not perusing our own dreams and desires, and of course most of all not
moving towards a social and economic equality and justice. It is a noble effort
to be the voice of unheard and silenced, but it is also a vital effort to make
those voices to make their own noise and send their own messages. To become an
empower women, first step is to become internally empowered. This must be
included in all teachings and policies of women organizations.
The external
empowerment, then; can come to the picture. The external empowerment must
include domestic and global support, cause advocacy to change policies toward
equality, social justice and equality, providing opportunities for involvement
in the movement and organizations. It is only when we adhere the concept of
internal empowerment that we can be successful with our efforts in our
organizations towards the empowerment of women as a whole.
A gardener plants
the seed of the tree, waters and cares for the tree. The environment, Sun and
Air, do their job too, but it is from within that the seed starts spreading and
growing, by its own given abilities. The seed has everything it needs to grow within
itself.
Written by: Annahita Mahdavi
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