IATE term of the week: Empowerment

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Empowerment This week the European Commission together with the European External Action Service adopted a new framework for the EU’s activities on gender equality and women’s empowerment in EU’s external relations.

That is why empowerment is the IATE term of this week. But what is empowerment? In this context, speaking about women’s empowerment, the new framework aims to fight violence against woman and girls, to grant them access to quality education and training and to strengthen the women’s role in policy and decision making.

According to IATE, empowerment is in social contexts: “the process of increasing the capacity of individuals or groups to make choices and to transform those choices into desired actions and outcomes“.

In the context of human rights, empowerment is: “The delegation of responsibility, authority, and accountability to act and manage within a defined area to achieve a set of agreed-upon goals and objectives“.

Another possible definition is: “multi-dimensional social process that helps people gain control over their own lives. It is a process that fosters power in people for use in their own lives, their communities and in their society, by acting on issues they define as important“.

As you can see, the term has many definitions and as usual it depends on the context in which it is used.

empowerment on iate

 

Sources

Empowerment on IATE

European Commission on the new framework

Understanding power

Photo source

 

Related Terminology Resources

Human Rights Glossary

Political rights glossary

The European Convention on Human Rights

 

 

Written by Raluca Caranfil
Communication Trainee at TermCoord
Journalist & Student at the University of Luxembourg