Vanessa Rickenbrode Dissertation Defense: "Bargaining with Empowerment: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of the Contested Conceptualization, Implementation, and Evaluation of Gender Empowerment"
Tue, July 25, 2023 at Zoom
Vanessa Rickenbrode, Sociology Doctoral Candidate, will defend her dissertation over Zoom at 10 a.m. July 25, 2023.
Title: Bargaining with Empowerment: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of the Contested Conceptualization, Implementation, and Evaluation of Gender Empowerment
Abstract: This dissertation uses mixed methods to empirically examine the contested conceptualization, implementation, and evaluation of women’s empowerment in the field of development. In the first study, I use the frame analytical approach to demonstrate the shared understandings and conflicts over empowerment’s conceptualization in the development discourse. Using 54 books and articles written by gender advocates from all over the world, and a grounded approach to coding, I demonstrate the ways empowerment frames vary in the way they elaborate or amplify certain problems, solutions, and end goals around one of three problem-solving schemas: equal rights and participation, power, or agency.
The second paper offers a case study from the collaborative effort of three NGOs implementing and evaluating a development project for women in rural India. Using ten semi-structured interviews with NGO staff and content related to the project’s proposal, intervention materials, and evaluations, I showcase the multiple and contradictory ways in which women’s empowerment is interpreted and deployed by various actors in the operationalization and implementation stages of the development process.
In the third paper, I apply a feminist methodology to quantitatively evaluate women’s empowerment in rural Jharkhand, India - using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with data from India’s National Family Health Survey 2019-21 (NFHS-5). Specifically, I model women’s empowerment as a process of women gaining transformative control over her life (including her nutrition) within a system of power inequalities based on caste, age, and forms of patriarchy - including men’s patriarchal values, intimate partner violence (IPV), and women’s internalized oppression. I find that rather than reflecting women's strategic empowerment, the popular measure of women's agency as decision-making power, is more likely a reflection of patriarchal bargains or burdened agency women end up taking within patriarchal (and violent) households.
This dissertation ultimately adds clarity to the current theoretical debates in the gender and development literature by identifying the defining features that produce contested claims regarding whether a program or policy empowers women. Methodologically, it helps close the gap in the contested discourse between feminists primarily utilizing qualitative methods and the bias towards quantitative analyses in the field of development. Lastly, it highlights the practical implications on women’s lives when applying “popular” or mainstream assumptions of women’s empowerment in practice.
Committee:
Dr. Wynne Wright (chair)
Dr. Raymond Jussaume
Dr. Hui Liu
Dr. Sejuti Das Gupta (James Madison College)
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https://msu.zoom.us/j/97333714458
Meeting ID: 973 3371 4458
Passcode: vanessa