[Anthropgrad] RMAP RESEARCH SEMINAR - Prof Saraswati Raju - 12.30-1.30pm Tuesday 24 June

[RMAP Seminars]

'APPROPRIATE' METHODOLOGY IN EVALUATING GENDER EMPOWERMENT PROJECTS 


Professor Saraswati Raju (Visiting Fellow at RMAP and a Social 
Geographer at Jawaharlal Nehru University, India)
12.30-1.30pm Tuesday 24 June 2008
Seminar Room B (Arndt Room) Coombs Building

Abstract
Planning language has appropriated the feminist vocabulary of 
'empowerment' almost universally, and India is no exception. Apart from 
the observation that the conceptual and theoretical understanding of the 
concept of empowerment remains limited in such discourses, it is 
extremely problematic to assess changes that can be attributed to 
particular interventions meant to 'empower' women. The task becomes 
still more challenging if measurable empirical evidences are being sought.

Based on my engagement with the impact assessment of a bilateral 
intervention project in rural north India, aimed at integrated women's 
empowerment, this presentation is about developing an 'appropriate 
methodology' for evaluating project-led social change. In foregrounding 
the evaluative framework, I question some of the underlying assumptions 
of the project approach, and suggest that given local specificities and 
embedded structures, a spatially contextualised approach has to be in 
place and that a meta-narrative or a blueprint for women's empowerment 
cannot be formulated.

Bio
Saraswati is interested in urban and rural development of India with a 
focus on gendered disparities in the labour market, literacy, education 
and empowerment. She is one of the founding members of the International 
Geographic Union (IGU) Commission on Gender and Geography, and has been 
a consultant to various UN agencies such as UNDP, UNFEM, UNFPA as well 
as the ILO and the Population Council's Regional office in New Delhi on 
building gender-sensitive data system and several evaluation studies for 
Laos, Cambodia and India. Her latest publications include the co-edited 
book, Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies of India (2006, Sage) and 
NGOs and the State in the Twenty-First Century (2006, INTRAC, UK).
-- 

Resource Management in Asia-Pacific Program

Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies

The Australian National University

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