New World Bank book explores how to empower the poor

It is widely accepted that effective poverty reduction depends on the ability to empower poor people to move out of poverty, yet the concept of empowerment tends to be poorly understood in development circles.

A new book released April 20 by the World Bank - Measuring Empowerment: Cross Disciplinary Perspectives - explores various aspects of empowerment and its relationship to poverty reduction.The book brings together the research and experience of 27 development experts from different disciplines who were asked to address the question of how best to define and measure empowerment.

The book is edited by Deepa Narayan, editor of the powerful three-part series Voices of the Poor, which chronicled the first-hand accounts of poverty from 60,000 poor men and women from developing countries.

Studies in this book tackle a range of issues with great academic rigour, while maintaining the "real-world" relevance of each question addressed. Building on the work of the 27 authors, the books present three key ideas.

One is that Inequality in power is pervasive and embedded in institutions from the local to global levels. Therefore, changes in the opportunity structure dictated by formal and informal rules are critical. Unlike the rich, poor people are less able to take action to bring about change on their own behalf. As a result, organisations of the poor, as well as organisations and communication technologies that link poor people to resources outside their own groups, are critical.

Differences between social groups are often more relevant to development and empowerment questions than individual differences. However, most research and measurement efforts focus on individuals.

The book builds a framework to ensure that empowerment becomes part of the development agenda so that the poor are treated as invaluable partners in development, and are finally treated as a resource and not the problem.

"We hope that this book, with its focus on measuring empowerment, will help spread approaches to poverty reduction that empower poor people," World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn said. "Unless poor people are at the centre of poverty reduction, policy making and program design it will not benefit them."