Empowering Women through Home-based Work and Institutionalized Threats in Ethiopia

In Ethiopia, women predominantly involve in the informal sector. Home-based work as part of this sector, which is mostly occupied by women, is a field of occupation that is scantly studied. The paper therefore focuses on the question that to what extent is home-based work significant, or does it have importance for women at all; looking it in terms of women‟s empowerment. To develop academic rejoinder for this question, methodologically, the re-searcher has followed qualitative research tradition. Therefore, data were col-lected through semi-structured interview, in-depth interview, and focus groups discussion. To understand the association of home-based work to empowerment and/or disempowerment, analytically, the research follows Kabeer‟s conceptu-alization of empowerment where she sees empowerment as a process. The process of empowerment entails change at different levels, and it is all about these individuals who had been denied to make choice get such ability. The empowerment of women from this approach has resource, agency and achievement dimension. Informed by these methodological and conceptual approaches, my findings reveal that majority of the informants and participants had similar subordi-nated position in the society having no income to control and no decision to make for the betterment of their lives. But, through basket weaving, they are able to earn income, to control and use this resource and to involve in signifi-cant decision making at household level. By this, they are even able to alter the dominant discourse of men as bread winner and women as house maker in the household; where indirectly they are bestowed with economic and interper-sonal/ familial empowerment. Thus, though involving oneself in home-based work seems accepting the unequal power relation and gender division of la-bour, I argue that for the women who are living in a patriarchal society (like the women in my case study), it might be best way to fight against domination, to show the potential and individual agency for social change, and to challenge dominant assumptions and discourses about men and women‟s role. Yet, it is impossible for them to bring change that alters the wider hierarchy and to break the institutionalized structures that subordinate women. Hence, in this regard, institutions like marriage, family, state and the market continued to have paradoxical nature; having the role of imperiling and supporting women‟s struggle in the process of empowerment. By implication, the empowerment of women at higher levels will only be realized whenever there is integrated effort of the poor women and development agencies including the government and other development practitioners.