Chapter 6 - Empowerment for Whom?

Key Takeaways

1. Empowerment is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon. Situations are always both enabling and constraining in particular ways, and programs like the one in this case must try and navigate the ways situations are simultaneously empowering and disempowering.
2. The GRL program is designed as an empowerment program or intervention, but that intervention is largely based on an assumption that change is located with the individual rather than through larger social structures. This focus on the individual may be a more available resource to some girls than others.
3. The GRL program, like many large national programs carried out at smaller sites across the country, must find ways to speak broadly to the common issues girls face. But in designing a program that reaches the largest number of girls, many of those who most need the program are left out when their experiences don’t fit those of most other girls their age.
4. Any program such as this one, designed to empower individuals, is situated in a particular social context(s) and there must be awareness of the way the messages are interpreted among myriad competing messages. What is said in the context of the program is taken up by girls and drawn on in their real lives in various ways.
5. Programs such as this are key sites of identity development for the individuals that participate—girls, coaches or administrators of the program—who are constantly engaged in identity work in the context of the program and in comparison with others in the program.