Reconceptualizing Women's Agency and Empowerment

Abstract This paper examines various understandings of “empowerment” and provides a critique of the way it is currently being adopted to describe the needs and experiences of women who break the law. Specifically, this paper examines the implications of a predominantly psychological notion of empowerment on how we conceive of women's agency and women's choices. In an effort to expand approaches to women's empowerment and women's agency beyond an individualistic analysis, the theoretical perspective of relational autonomy is suggested as an alternate way of understanding women's lawbreaking.