Women's Empowerment and the Feminization of Poverty among

there is faith in the city’s life-style among those who remain” (1978: 11). Through my more recentobservations, I can support her example that the sexes are still segregated in the local economy “tomaintain the purity of women and thereby also their families’ honor,” forcing women who need “tosupplement their families’ incomes to work at such jobs as….sewing, cooking and laundering, taskswhich are part-time and generally undertaken in the household” (Ibid.: 17). Dwyer associated thisadherence to daily life traditions to the town’s size and regional history (Ibid.: 21).Legal, socio-economic and Islamic customary segregation as previously analyzed inMorocco limits Roudaniyin women’s empowerment according to Kabeer’s dimensions of resources,agency and achievements. Traditionally, Roudaniyin women of specific street neighborhoods havebeen able to use loosely organized voluntary networks, which are dependent upon their mobility asfemale heads of households, to exhibit power (Dwyer, 1978: 179). Yet, Dwyer cited a socialorganizationalshift in Taroudannt of deteriorating “female support groups,” raising the question ofthe effect of this deterioration as either perceived losses or gains for the women in support of a newconcept of ‘selfhood:’ “The more long-standing notions are key to a specifically Moroccan attitudeabout maleness and femaleness as well as to Moroccan social and economic philosophy, andpressure upon them can affect male-female relations, this time from a more explicitly ideologicaldirection” (Ibid.: 181). This flows into the Moroccan notion of ‘personhood,’ perceived by Dwyeras embedded within Taroudannt society rather than the Western view of isolation over interaction:“It unfolds interactionally, so that personality or character varies rather flexibly from relationship torelationship. The self defines itself contextually” (Ibid.: 182).Participatory assessment research approachApplying Dwyer’s concepts of Taroudannt to Rowlands’ conceptualization of women’sempowerment focuses on access to decision-making and change in people’s perceptions of self inthree dimensions: developing one’s sense of self (i.e. confidence); increasing one’s ability tonegotiate decision-making processes within close relationships; bringing people together to givethem greater power than as individuals (Chant, 2012c: 4). The use of these multidimensionalconcepts also elucidates Chant’s challenges to the feminization of poverty theory. The survival ofsome women who experience extreme cases of responsibility and obligation in a functioninginegalitarian society demonstrates how attempts to change deeply entrenched structures – law vs.rules legitimized by religious tradition – can translate into change in the Moroccan reality ofresource, agency and achievement needed for women’s empowerment.Progress toward the ability to make choices was embraced by the UK-registered charityMoroccan Children’s Trust (MCT) in its establishment of a women’s group piloted in September28