Navigating empowerment: an exploration of rural women’s experiences from South India

This research looks into the experiences of rural women in a sub-district of Karnataka in South India to explore the place and function of empowerment in their lives, while paying attention to how they express resistance and agency in their oppressive context. The aim is to provide a critical and caring space for the complex experiences and voices of global south rural women, and the many ways they navigate the power dynamics and restrictions in key aspects of their lives. The women whose lives inform this research are part of an empowerment project run by a local NGO, and its role in the women's experiences is explored by critically looking at its visualisation and implementation of empowerment, guided by feminist theorisations of NGO-isation and critiques of empowerment in gender and development practice. Feminist methodologies guided the research through ethical dilemmas and was instrumental in understanding and addressing power relations with the women during research.