Empowerment
April 15, 2010
This article describes the possible positive side of depression. A professional photographer with a life-long history of depression seeks treatment. She quickly becomes happier while on medication and her photography reflects that. Instead of dark, depressing black and whites, she takes color pictures of happy people doing happy things. She’s disgusted with the perceived loss of her talent so she goes off antidepressants. But after a few months, she chooses to go back on them again. THAT is making a well informed (and I would say empowered) choice.
I believe empowerment is all about choice. If we don’t see options, we feel trapped and powerless. I contend that we have a choice in everything and if we don’t think so, we can still choose how to approach the situation. When you feel stuck, it’s because you can’t see a way out and feel you have no choice.
According to Swift & Levin (1987), these three strategies constitute the cardinal principles of empowerment:
1. Define the situations, conditions or problems which they face
2. Participate in the elaboration of the solution
3. Act on the decisions they have taken.
This sounds good and is something we can all try to do. I love the whole idea of being empowered, moving forward, taking control of my life.
In the community psychology context, empowerment usually applies to the marginalized people of a society. Is there a time when the idea of empowerment is a bad thing? I was pretty shocked to read about this policy in Zimbabwe which takes effect April 15. This news clip is pretty informative.
Do you think that a previously marginalized part of society has the right to take control of someone else’s hard work and business? Is there perhaps a better way to level the playing field? Empowerment sounds like such a wonderful thing but like any good idea, it can go too far. Maybe we should think about this idea of empowerment and use it with a little caution.
There was a man in one of my art classes at Cochise a number of years ago who was deaf and did not have much education. I don’t know how he started with classes at the college, as he did not have any other formal education. He was smart, but did not know how to lip read well, could not write well and could not sign. He was never taught those things. I met him after he’d been attending art classes for a number of years. His first couple of years, his work was very dark and somber. It was, at times, disturbing. As the years went on and as people made an effort to communicate with him and he made friends for the first time in his life, his work changed. It was bright and colorful and cheery. The classes became so important to him and to the rest of us, that when his family said they would no longer pay for the classes, we help him get a student assistant job so he could continue to attend the classes free of charge. So he could paint. He was not the only one empowered. There were many who had little contact with someone with a disability. He was able to enrich their lives as much as they enriched his. He could not drive and his family did not drive him to the college, so he hitch-hiked rain or shine of freezing cold. I had not thought of him in a while and your blog brought him back to mind.
Jenni, I agree we all have choices even if we feel stuck. I do not know how I feel about using caution with empowerment. Maybe I don’t understand where you’re coming from. I think people need to be taught to keep their power which ultimately makes them feel empowered when they make choices they want to make. No one makes them choose a particular choice, and they choose what they want for themselves.
I almost get the sense you think it’s a good idea to keep the oppressed, oppressed.
Unique and thoughtful take on empowerment. I think you may be asking about the cost vs benefit of empowerment; about what empowerment means; and how empowering “should” occur. Keep thinking!
-Aminur