caa a22 4500 606152261 CHVBK 20210128100548.0 cr unu---uuuuu 210128e20150801xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s11266-015-9586-y doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s11266-015-9586-y Phillips Ruth Social Work and Policy Studies Program, Faculty of Education and Social Work, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia aut How ‘Empowerment' May Miss Its Mark: Gender Equality Policies and How They are Understood in Women's NGOs [Elektronische Daten] [Ruth Phillips] Women's NGOs are key players in the struggle to gain gender equality around the world. Motivated by a concern about the lack of progress in achieving gender equality on a global scale, the purpose of the study was to investigate the agendas and conceptualizations of women's NGOs for gaining gender equality, and to find out to what extent they identified with feminist strategies for social change. This paper is focused on the intersection of how women's NGOs conceptualise and deliver action towards gender equality and why gender inequality is still a major global social problem. The key mechanism for inquiry in this paper is the interrogation of how the concept of ‘empowerment' in contemporary gender equality policies and programs, which are largely carried out by women's NGOs, has emerged as a possible counter force to achieving gender equality. Given that ‘empowerment' frames contemporary gender equality policy at all levels of governance (local, national and global), the study explored its impact on the progress of achieving gender equality from the women's NGO perspective. The survey data revealed tensions between the wide range of feminist agendas of the NGOs and the limitations of the current empowerment paradigm. These tensions are between predominantly individualised empowerment processes and the much broader structural and other feminist objectives of how the NGOs understood gender equality as a concept and about how it could be achieved in practice. International Society for Third-Sector Research and The Johns Hopkins University, 2015 Gender equality nationallicence Empowerment nationallicence Women's NGOs nationallicence Feminisms nationallicence VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations Springer US; http://www.springer-ny.com 26/4(2015-08-01), 1122-1142 0957-8765 26:4<1122 2015 26 11266 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-015-9586-y text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-015-9586-y text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Phillips Ruth Social Work and Policy Studies Program, Faculty of Education and Social Work, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations Springer US; http://www.springer-ny.com 26/4(2015-08-01), 1122-1142 0957-8765 26:4<1122 2015 26 11266