Choosing silence: rethinking voice, agency and women’s empowerment

Abstract

Voice, or the act of speaking out, is often identified in the gender and development literature, and much of the feminist literature, as one of the key conditions demonstrating women’s empowerment. Indeed, while silence has its defenders (Gal 1991; Mahoney 1996),1 for most feminists women’s ability to make choices and speak their mind has been seen as proof of agency and empowerment (Gilligan 1982; Olsen 2003 [1978]), while silence has been deplored as ‘a symbol of passivity and powerlessness’ (Gal 1991: 175). The language of choice/voice also frames the thinking and writing about women’s agency and empowerment produced by development scholars, policy-makers and practitioners. Women who cannot speak out are seen as disempowered, unable to act and to effect change. The search for empowerment has thus become a search for women’s voices, particularly the moments when women demonstrate agency2 by speaking out against patriarchal authority (Kabeer 1999). While keenly aware that a willingness to speak out and name oppressionsand oppressors is a critical factor for challenging injustices, especially gendered injustices, I believe the assumption that voice equals agency needs to be rethought. The literature on women’s empowerment, with its emphasis on voice and agency, is embedded in neo-liberal assumptions that individuals who speak hard truths will be protected by international and national institutions devoted to democracy, freedom of speech and human rights (Bishai 2004). Yet these assumptions are hard to sustain in a world where challenges to women’s advancement and gender equality abound and where the World Health Organization warns of an epidemic of violence against women in ‘private’ and ‘public’ life (WHO 2002; UNRISD 2005). In such a world, can we assume that masculinist privilege can always be openly challenged?3 Do we need to consider other forms of voice/agency/empowerment? Can silences and secrecy be legitimate and even empowering strategies for dealing with difficult situations? This chapter argues that the uncritical identification of silence with dis-empowerment, and voice with agency/empowerment, so common in thegender and development literature (Cornwall and Brock 2005), as well as much of the wider feminist literature, dismisses and obscures the potential of many subtle strategies attempting to improve women’s lives and to foster gender equality. The chapter explores the possibility that silences and secrecy may be essential strategies for negotiating gender relations (Kandiyoti 1998; Mohammed 2002), and considers the ethical, analytical and methodological implications of researching and writing about silence/secrecy as empowered choices/agency for women in an often masculinist, dangerous and conflict-ridden world.

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