The Business of Women's Empowerment by Sofie Tornhill;

Author:Sofie Tornhill;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Book Network Int'l Limited trading as NBN International (NBNi)
Published: 2012-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

In contrast to the understanding of empowerment as an investment, other development actors were criticized for underpinning a state of passivity among impoverished populations. Hand in Hand International claims that it is a challenge for its programs to overcome an “entitlement mentality” that is said to be common in many areas where the organization works. Aid and government programs have professedly made people used to handouts; therefore, they expect cash or gifts as part of the support and may refrain from participating in programs that lack this dimension.[1] The centrality of self-help, it is stated, must be emphasized early on and examples of successful cases can be used to communicate the right kind of attitudes (Hand in Hand International 2013: 14). This had been the case in South Africa where, as previously mentioned, participants were shown success story videos and met former participants at introduction events. However, somewhat contradictory to HiH’s description of the problem above, the success stories tend to show how Coca-Cola has helped, for example, by renovating restaurants or providing container kiosks, which fueled, rather than lowered, participants’ expectations of access to material resources. Other partner organizations shared the notion that expectations of unconditional economic support obstructed their work. This was used to explain the difficulty of attracting participants to the program as well as the high dropout rates. A teacher at the institute for entrepreneurship in Mexico found it especially challenging to work with groups that were sponsored by well-known companies, like the 5by20 program. Sarcastically, she noted that many had signed up because they expected gifts—“Well, surprise, there is no little present!”—and then never returned when they realized that their expectations would not be fulfilled. According to the representatives of the NGO in the rural Mexican town, inhabitants had become accustomed to go to the local government for economic support: “Sometimes here in the villages, people are badly accustomed to that everything is free.” They saw it as part of their objective to break a pattern of dependency through encouraging a stronger work ethic: “It is necessary to change the mentality a little bit; children grow up thinking that they are not capable themselves and instead just hold out their hands.” As suggested here, a deficient work ethic is passed on to the younger generations who learn from their parents to identify themselves as helpless and therefore become dependent upon support from others.

Attitudes that counteracted partaking in a program not offering material support were also discussed by some of the participants who felt that others in their groups had failed to appreciate what the program was providing. On one occasion, I went to a small market in South Africa where twenty women had been trained by HiH SA. The women I spoke to said that only three of them still wanted to have contact with the organization. The rest, they said, were disappointed and refused to talk to HiH representatives when they sometimes came to visit:

They don’t want them. Some of them don’t want them, their help.

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