Beyond ‘rescue’ or ‘responsibilisation’ within girls’ empowerment programmes: Notes on recovering agency from the Global South

Abstract

Girls’ empowerment programmes have been celebrated as the ‘Smarter Economics’ of pulling girls and families out of poverty; and critiqued as neoliberal strategies for ‘delivering gendered equality through responsibilised selves. These oppositional accounts, conceptualised within institutions of the Global North, present girls as ‘victims’ in different ways, adopting narrow, liberal conceptions of agency and empowerment. Analysing a girls’ empowerment programme from south India, we argue that agency is a relational quality embedded within social relationships. Based on this understanding, we present the ethical need and possibilities for going beyond frameworks that individualise empowerment and position it as ‘rescue’ and ‘responsibilisation.’