Abstract
M.A.
South Africa is still struggling to overcome the burden of race, class and gender-based inequality inherited from colonialism and Apartheid (Kieffer, 2003). The main goals of the transformation process include the facilitation of socio-economic development and growth through the empowerment of historically disadvantaged people, particularly poor black women. Throughout the world, governments’ policy documents are increasingly focusing on empowering the poor.
Literature indicates that there are many different interpretations of empowerment, these interpretations are often inconsistent even within a single organiation. Limited material is also available on the practicalities of measuring, tracking and evaluating progress made toward empowerment of the poor. Moreover, although the poor are the target of empowerment efforts little is known about their experience of these efforts. The present study explored poor, black rural women’s lived experiences of participating in an empowerment program.
In South Africa, the poorest of the poor are those rural households headed by black women. Throughout their lives black women from rural communities are more vulnerable to poverty and deprivation. This is increased by the rigidity of societal gender roles. Findings from available research indicate that poverty is not only a social and political problem in South African context, but is also a significant problem for psychological practice especially in the field of mental health. Poverty concerns the issue of individuals and households being denied opportunities and choices most basic to human development. It also deprives people of decent standard of living, freedom, dignity, high self-esteem, emotional expression and respect from others (Saris & Johnston-Roben, 2000). However, the discipline of psychology has not contributed much in the area of poverty and poverty alleviation.
By investigating poor rural women’s lived experiences of participating in an empowerment program this investigation aimed to enrich the psychological understanding of the phenomena of empowerment as a means of poverty eradication. It engaged poor rural women in a dialogue with the aim of describing their experience of participating in an empowerment program. In order to ensure that the women's own subjective experiences, interpretations and understandings remained the focal point of the research the existential-phenomenological system of inquiry was employed.
A qualitative research paradigm was employed to fully understand the subjective and lived experiences of empowerment as a means of poverty eradication. The data was collected through in-depth, open-ended interviews that facilitated unique and personal descriptions. A pilot interview was conducted with a woman participating in an empowerment program. The pilot study indicated that the research question (How would you describe the experience of participating in an empowerment program?), combined with other broad open-ended questions, facilitated the attainment of rich, vital, substantive descriptions of the experience being investigated.