Page 9 - Social_Philanthropy

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2.2 Women empowerment

The term empowerment, as previously discussed, implies a whole process, a process towards
emancipation. This term was first coined at the Fourth World Conference in Beijing (September, 1995) to
refer to the increased participation of women in decision-making processes and access to power. However,
this expression now has another dimension: the awareness of the power that women hold individually and
collectively and which has to do with the recovery of women’s own dignity as persons (Díaz, 2018).

Therefore, this concept refers to the training for
emancipation that women acquire before their lives,
together with the collective power that provides them
with strategies to produce socio-cultural changes.
It is a process by which women increase their ability
to shape their own lives and their environment, an
evolution in women’s self-awareness, status and
effectiveness in social interactions.

In addition, international organizations such as UN
Women (UN Entity for Gender Equality and the
Empowerment of Women) are committed to the
empowerment of women as a strategy to achieve
a more equal and beneficial society for all.
As Michele Bachelet pointed out at the opening
ceremony of the New Economy Forum
„Empowering women is empowering the
whole community” (Tricoire, 2019).

Source: Empowerment (Bruna, 2019)
2.3 Gender and environment

The progressive environmental deterioration of our planet is
a consequence of the devastating development models that have
prevailed in recent decades, based on the absence of ethical foundations
and respect for natural cycles.

This global crisis is supported by a model of development and a way of
life that increases the gap between poor and rich, whilst amplifiying the
inequalities between women and men, creating focuses of poverty,
especially in rural zones of Southern countries. In this way, development
is equivalent to „bad development”, thus the deterioration of the planet
and the pressure on natural mechanisms of assimilation trigger Source: Nature (Burden, 2019)
a depletion of resources, significantly affecting the economy, culture,
politics and social relations (IUCN, 2020).