Rethinking development: a two-pronged approach to the concept of empowerment for women in development in South Africa

While the South African national government's development post apartheid policies declare a commitment to the “empowerment” of the poor, including mainstreaming of the most marginalized groups in the country (that is, children, poor women, and people with disabilities), the neoliberal decentralization strategy the government has implemented undercuts empowerment by requiring cost sharing for service delivery to the poor. Research conducted with women's groups in an impoverished rural area of South Africa found out that these women rejected this cost sharing empowerment strategy. Other studies (Oberhauser and Pratt; Sotshongaye and Moller) of similar groups support my research findings that South Africa's rural poor women think about “development” in terms of the state's earlier social welfare approach under apartheid where the government provided infrastructure and services without cost sharing. This paper starts with a discussion of theories of women's empowerment, a brief background of South Africa, followed by a twopronged approach to the concept of empowerment - one by the South African government and another one by the rural women. The paper ends with a summary highlighting outcomes of both approaches of empowerment in the context of applicable development for the poor. Keywords: Empowerment, organization, development, rural women, marginalization