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Kabeer's simple and illustrative definition of empowerment is "the expansion in people's ability to make strategic life choices in a context where this ability was previously denied to them" (Kabeer, 1999: 437). Women's empowerment, then, is conceptualized as an increase in agency over time. Little is it known about the importance of the effect of 'self directed motivations and desires' and autonomy on women's agency. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationships among women's autonomy and labor force participation along with their effects on women's agency in Nuevo Leon, Mexico. For this, we use the structural equation modeling approach. Our results reveal that women's autonomy and participation in the labor market positively influence their agency levels.

Portrayals of Islamic teachings in mass media often present Muslim women as victims of patriarchal norms. Often covered in a full veil, and without individuality, they tend to be depicted using a monochrome image, across Muslim countries and regions. It does not portray the social reality and expectations of Muslim women, which are in fact diverse and contextual. This book consists of articles that attempt to answer the question, are Muslim women merely passive objects in constructing their role, despite the spread of social media and the Internet, the increased demands of earning disposable income for their families, and their migration to non-Muslim countries around the world? It closely examines women's agency in negotiating their role in Muslim-majority societies and in new places of settlement (Australia). These articles analyse Muslim women's narratives in a wide range of economic, political, social and cultural milieu and their relationship to identity construction and portrayal in the new millennium"

Research on women who divorce their abusive husbands typically draws on the experiences of those who have had contact with formal intimate partner violence (IPV) support services. The experiences of women who have not sought such support remain poorly understood. Drawing upon a series of longitudinal, in-depth interviews with 12 women who did not seek formal IPV services, this work illuminates women's "strategically stealthy" agency, as they navigate spousal violence, seek human connection and formal support, and eventually file for divorce. This article proposes a revision of the transtheoretical model's (TTM) preparation stage from 30 days to a flexible time frame of months and even years, which allows a more complex, agentic understanding of IPV survivors' actions, behaviors, and help-seeking efforts deployed in planning for divorce. By expanding the time frame of TTM's preparation stage, this work has broad implications for social work practice.

Women's Agency and Social Change: Assam and Beyond focuses on varied oppression, power relations and ideologies embedded in the complex yet interdependent social, political, economic and legal structures, and women's subordination therein. British intervention, 1826–1947, by itself did not impact the agency aspect on women directly, but the emergence of new forces and factors sowed the seeds of women's agency to impact social change, even if minimal. In the post-Independence period, British colonial legacy perpetuated the s

Pervasive feminism is a component located in emotionality—feminist emotion—and contains women's primary agency. Because affect and emotions are elusive, an interpretive conceptual tool is necessary and is key to making use of their potential for feminist politics aimed at women's empowerment and well‐being and to build gender equality. This essay builds on contemporary feminist theory and affect theory and draws from multidisciplinary research. It presents a new theoretical framework anchored in hermeneutics and phenomenology to pin down the affective component of women's multifaceted, intersectional emotional experiences of gender. A case study also illustrates how the theoretical premises around the concept offeminist emotionare compatible with and useful for feministpraxis.

In a phenomenological study with 16 American and French Arab Muslim women attending college in the United States and France, all self-declared as religious and half of them wearing the hijab, participants express strong arguments against stereotypes of oppression and submission. They affirm agency and personal choice with respect to veiling, in a context of ambient skepticism that is often endorsed by Western feminism. Attention to intersectional experiences of Muslim women and reference to feminist models centered on non-Western women may help understand how second-generation Arab Muslim women experience and express agency.

"In this innovative, elegantly written investigation, Diana Meyers invites her readers to reflect on, and devise ways of resisting, the ubiquitous yet varied imagery of 'woman' that saturates the social-political western world, thwarting women's efforts to achieve autonomous self-hood. Ranging widely across pronatalist messages, psychiatric practice, the health-beauty industry, and subtly conveyed inducements to remake the female body, she shows how women ingest normalizing images that they must struggle to expel if they are to affirm an authentic sense of self. This is a hopeful book, for Meyers is convinced that feminist women can indeed liberate themselves from the pressures such imagery exerts."--Lorraine Code, Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy, York University.