The term “women’s empowerment” has invaded the research literature and reports issued by civil society organizations in the Arab region, without sufficient introduction to this term, its dimensions, indicators, and methods for measuring it, especially in view of the geographical and cultural specificities, and the different historical circumstances of women from one country to another: the empowerment of women in... Belgium, or Ecuador is not the same as empowering them in Syria.
This is precisely what justifies the interest in publishing the “Methodological Guide to Women’s Empowerment,” prepared by the work team in the “Gender and its Indicators” project, managed by the Women and Development Committee of the General Department of Cooperative Development (DGCD) in Belgium.
Instead of adopting a fixed template that applies to all women, this guide takes into account the cultural specificities of each society and proposes a flexible methodology that allows for the formulation of empowerment indicators.
Empowerment, according to the words of the authors of this guide: “is not based on a process of horizontal development, or fixed values in society, but rather a cumulative process built on the activities of women’s movements, as well as mixed movements.”
Thus, this guide explores the relationship of the concept of empowerment to other related terms, such as: power, distribution of responsibilities, and building identity.
An ambitious mother passionate about medicine suffers and collapses from the transformations imposed by the totalitarian government’s control in all aspects of her social, political, and personal life, depriving her of her passion, identity, and even her desire for motherhood. A dreamy daughter attached to life lives under the care of her grandmother, because her mother often stays away from her. She lives in conflict in a society governed by fear of any difference, in which every desire for uniqueness becomes a crime that must be eliminated. Through the turbulent and volatile relationship between mother and daughter and the story of three generations of Latvian women during the Soviet control of their country, Nora Kstina tells a transparent story about motherhood, love, the desire to live, and hope.
