Rethinking Women’s Empowerment

Whenever articles talk about women in positions of leadership, including some that I have authored myself, they always end up using the same term: empowerment. We talk about empowering women or about women's empowerment or about empowerment achieved through leadership development. It may sound positive and even kind. But if you think about the word for a moment, it begins to suggest something that probably wasn't our intention. You empower a person by giving them permission, resources, or confidence that they did not already possess. The verb includes a direction, power moves from the person who empowers to the person who is empowered and hidden in that direction is an unexamined assumption as to who already has it and who doesn't.

I do not believe that anyone who is producing this kind of content actually means it in that sense; not me, at least, when I've used the word. However, language does include assumptions even if we don't intend them to, and the term ‘empowerment’ has gradually established an entire genre of leadership content based on a perspective which merits more criticism than it currently receives.

The pattern becomes clear when you start to look for it: when you discuss leadership with women, the advice tends to focus on qualities she can develop within herself, such as confidence, resilience, and self-awareness, as well as vision. These are all genuine qualities and all worth working on. Then, almost by the way, somebody refers to sponsorship, that is, a person who has real influence using it for her. This involves being given stretch assignments that someone else has to assign and having flexible policies that someone else has to approve. The inner development receives the main attention, while the actual transfers of power, the decision of who gets the project, whose name is mentioned in a room she isn't in, and whose budget supports whose bet, are only mentioned as a bullet point towards the end, if they are mentioned at all.

It's no accident. It's simpler to talk about and more easily accepted by organizations. Asking women to build resilience places no demands on anyone else. On the other hand, asking those who already have the budget, the number of staff, and the influence to actually redistribute some of it is making a real request of people who usually don't like being asked. Because of this the focus tends to stay on the more comfortable aspect of the situation and the entire arrangement is referred to as 'empowerment', when in fact it's only providing preparation. Readiness and the internal work, that is important,  I'm not retracting that. But it doesn't amount to the same as power actually changing hands, and treating the two as if they are the same makes it too easy for everyone to get off the hook.

Let me make it clear what I am not saying. Confidence, resilience, and self-awareness are not mere distractions, and I shall continue to write about them since they are truly components of effective leadership once people have the space to develop them. All I am asserting is that these qualities have become a convenient point at which this discussion can end, since developing them does not require anyone in a position of power to give up anything. The more difficult question, the one that the language of 'empowerment' allows us to avoid quietly, is not 'how do we help women prepare for opportunity'? It is 'who has been deciding who gets an opportunity, and are they actually willing to change their decisions?'

The second of these questions is more difficult to deal with in a program because it does not focus on the person who is being developed; instead it focuses on the person who is carrying out the development, that is, the sponsor, the manager, or the executive who decides which name is to appear on the slide. It inquires into what they have given up, not what they have offered as encouragement. A stretch assignment which involves no cost to the person giving it is not an example of sponsorship; it is merely a gesture. True sponsorship involves a specific cost on the part of the sponsor: it means spending a favour, taking a risk about someone before the room has come to the conclusion that she is ready, or sharing the credit rather than keeping it.

Well, then, let me say what I would prefer this discussion to be focusing on. Rather than talking about how women can become more prepared, more visible, and more resilient, although it is true that all of those things are worthwhile to strive for, it's more to the point to ask which specific individual who currently holds real power is willing to allocate some of their own power to someone else before it has become safe or convenient to do so. That wouldn't be empowerment; it would be a form of redistribution and it's a much smaller and far more precise request than most of what is presented under the heading of empowerment, which may be the very reason why it occurs so much less frequently than the language implies.

I never developed a five-step approach for this situation, and I believe that's actually the whole point. As soon as it turns into a framework, it becomes something a woman can carry out by herself, she can build her resilience, improve her vision, and network more deliberately and thus the responsibility once again quietly moves back to her, exactly where the idea of 'empowerment' originally placed it. The real work in this case should remain with the person who already has the power. The one genuine question to ask is whether they're willing to use that power on somebody else's behalf.