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Chapter 2 Empowerment of a society

2.1 Empowerment of a society – The concept

Social empowering, or the empowerment of a society, is a process by which people are provided with
a set of skills, capacities and abilities that enable them to participate in social change. To empower is, in
the end, nothing but giving all kinds of tools to make people become masters of their environment, or to
design their own environment and their relations with it... to be empowered is to become free!

In this way, empowerment looks for people to self-manage their own needs. Thus, we can agree that the
concept of empowerment is related to the appropriation or re-appropriation of individual power, which
corresponds to the analysis of the current situation (adaptation, dependency and/or submission) and to
free oneself from it. It is about acknowledging the possibility of influencing one’s own existence in order to
change it (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

The origin of the philosophy of empowerment is found in the approach to popular education developed in
the 1960s from the work of Paulo Freire. The participatory approach emerged in the development field of
the 1970s; it consists of “a process of reducing the vulnerability and increasing the own capacities of the
poor and marginalized sectors, which leads to promote among them a human and sustainable
development” (Díaz, 2018).

In recent years the term “empowerment” has expanded its scope.
From the first meaning of the term applied only to gender analyses,
it has come to designate also the set of vulnerable groups. The
scope of its use in studies includes development, community and
social work, and development cooperation. In the same way, the
field of application of the term, which originally belonged to the
women’s and development movements, has progressively
transcended to other fields among which international
organizations such as the United Nations (UN), the World Bank,
and even specializations such as business management and
personal development, stand out.

Source: Society (Iwata, 2019)