Empowerment?
Did anyone else have music playing in the back of their head? For some reason lyrics in John Mayer's Waiting on the World to Change and the chorus to We Are the World kept popping up in mine. Don't ask me why...
What got me the most was how Taft distinguished between activism and empowerment. This sort of threw me a little because I wanted to believe they were the same, or at least were seeking to accomplish the same thing. The more I think about it the more I realize that activism does emphasize social change, while empowerment tends to focus on personal change (28). When I think back to my Girl Scout days we were learning self-improvement skills instead of attending protest rallies. Not that I would have expected too many rallies to take place in my neighborhood (who would protest suburbia?), but when I think about it the focus was on us being better girls--and selling cookies.
I left Girl Scouts when I was little, and I was in my late teens when I became more of a social activist. I noticed that some friends I know who stayed in Girl Scouts for much longer seemed to focus only on themselves or on girl-only issues. On the other hand, I always found it interesting that there would be babies and young children at the same marches and rallies I was attending as an adult. These children were being exposed to activism at an early age. Some of them I have been able to see grow up and become activists themselves. It seems that activism is empowering, while empowerment doesn't always lead to activism.
Empowerment programs do seem to be rather individualistic (right Alyssa?), and about embracing the ideology of liberal feminism. I question how you can encourage social change and a sense of community when you focus so much on the individual...I also wonder about what this agenda means for girls from more conservative families, and the way they view empowerment and activism. Would conservative girls really be empowered in a liberal feminist program?
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