User:BrittanyTeague/sandbox

 ARTICLE: 

The article that I decided to contribute to is "Women's empowerment" (Women's empowerment). I picked this article because I feel it's important to speak on the things that empowers women and how empowerment can create positive outcomes/effects on women's life's (i.e. development and economics). It's important for women to feel empowered to accomplish the things that they were previously unable to accomplish because of the many social and economic barriers. The section that I would like to contribute to is "Importance of women's empowerment in societies", because that section is really short and missing a lot of the importance. I feel that there can be many things added there.

 **Final Article Draft**: 

Empowerment can be defined in many ways, however, when talking about women’s empowerment, empowerment means accepting and allowing people who are on the outside of the decision-making process into it. “This puts a strong emphasis on participation in political structures and formal decision-making and, in the economic sphere, on the ability to obtain an income that enables participation in economic decision-making.” Empowerment is the process that creates power in individuals over their own lives, society, and in their communities. People are empowered when they are able to access the opportunities available to them without limitations and restrictions. Feeling entitled to make your own decisions creates a sense of empowerment. Empowerment includes the action of raising the status of women through education, raising awareness, literacy, and training. Women's empowerment is all about equipping and allowing women to make life-determining decisions through the different problems in society.

Women's empowerment and achieving gender equality is essential for our society to ensure the sustainable development of the country. Sustainable development is impossible without gender equality and women’s empowerment. Sustainable development accepts environmental protection, social and economic development,, and without women’s empowerment, women wouldn’t feel equally important to the process of development as men. The full participation of both men and women is critical for development. Only acknowledging men’s participation will not be beneficial to sustainable development. In the context of women and development, empowerment must include more choices for women to make on their own. Without gender equality and empowerment, the country could not be just, and social change wouldn’t occur. Therefore, women’s empowerment plays a huge role in development, without the equal inclusion of women in development, women would not be able to benefit or contribute to the development of the country.

When we discuss women’s empowerment, we must discuss the different barriers that underprivileged women face, that makes it more difficult for them to obtain empowerment in society. It’s essential to talk about how opportunities are structured by gender, race, and class. For instance, work opportunities and the work environment can create empowerment for women. Empowerment in the workplace can positively affect job satisfaction and performance. However, women of color do not have the same accessibility and privileges in work settings. Women of color are faced with more disadvantages in the work place. Therefore, African American women’s empowerment is their resistance to control, standing up for themselves and not conforming to societal norms and expectations. Drawing on postmodern and critical views of power, feminist perspectives look at empowerment as a form of resistance within systems of unequal power relations. Within the societal setting of race, gender, and class politics, African American women’s empowerment in work environment “can be seen as resistance to attempts to fix meanings of appropriate identity and behavior, where such meanings are interpreted as controlling, exploitative, and other- wise oppressive to African American women.” When talking about women’s empowerment, it’s crucial to examine the social injustices on women in everyday organizational life that are influenced by race, class, and gender.  BIBLIOGRAPHY: 

I chose this source because it explains the concept of empowerment to help readers get a better understanding of women's empowerment. This source also explains the women development perspective and connects that to empowerment. I plan to contribute more information on the concept of empowerment to my chosen article.

I chose this article because it explains the economic development process. I plan to touch on how improvement in women's access to more job opportunities can help empower women.

I chose this source because I also wanted to add in women of color when talking about women empowerment. I feel it's important to be sure to include minorities when talking about women, because every situation is different. This source examines "control, resistance, and empowerment as revealed in the literature on African American women’s work experiences."

 Evaluation: 

The article that I decided to evaluate is “Gender and Development”. The first time that I read this article, I felt that there was not much criticism or discussion that I can elaborate on. Being that, I felt that the article was written well and in great detail. The article broke down the sub-tittles (topics), to help readers to better understand the arguments of the article by breaking down the main points, so that us readers can connect them to the article as a whole. While reading the topics, I had some criticism that I wanted to discuss in my evaluation, but as I continued to read the “criticism” section, the author touched on the points that I felt was needed to be criticized. This is why I initially thought that this article was well written, and I could not criticize or evaluate it as much. However, after re-reading the article and looking at the talk page, l was able to dig a little deeper and think about the article more.

I had to re-read the “Gender and Development” article to distinguish the meanings of “Women and Development” and “Women in Development.” While this article did state that, “WAD is differentiated from WID by way of the theoretical framework upon which it was built. Rather than focus specifically on women’s relationship to development, WAD focuses on the relationship between patriarchy and capitalism. This theory seeks to understand women’s issues from the perspectives of neo-Marxism and dependency theory, though much of the theorizing about WAD remains undocumented due to the persistent and pressing nature of development work in which many WAD theorists engage”, I feel that this article lacks examples of each term. For readers like me that gets a better understanding of terms and arguments by using examples, example would have been beneficial in this article because they are helpful for one’s lack of understanding.

“Gender and Development”, provided context for the reader. I notice many highlighted links that directs you to another article, however, some context wasn’t necessary to highlight because it was obvious or irrelevant. Also, some highlighted links didn’t really explain in much detail the argument of the link and/or term. I got more sidetracked as I continued to read the article because of some of the unnecessary highlighted context. However, the article had a detailed lead section that had a clear and easy to understand overview. For the most part, the structure of the article was clear. The headings and sub-heading were relevant to the main points. However, I do feel that this article could have had more images; there were no images in the article. I believe that the article covered different aspects of the main topic. From discussing women in development (WID), women and development (WAD), gender and development (GAD) and neoliberal frameworks, this article touched on different topics that was relevant to the articles title (Gender and Development.) I felt that this article was written with a neutral tone because of the many facts, I felt it was unbiased in a sense. However, on the other hand, I felt that the article could have discussed more about intersectionality when discussing Women and Development, Women in Development, Gender and Development, and neoliberal frameworks. While the article did state, “the WAD perspective suffers from a tendency to view women as a class and pay little attention to the differences among women (such as feminist concept of intersectionality), including race and ethnicity, and prescribe development endeavors that may only serve to address the needs of a particular group. While an improvement on WID, WAD fails to fully consider the relationships between patriarchy, modes of production, and the marginalization of women”; this was the only small section that touched on the topic of intersectionality. It is important to discuss minority women’s multiple forms of subordinations not only by their sex, but also by their race and class. Women and Development, Women in Development, and Gender and Development can be thoroughly explained by speaking about ALL women. While reading this article I felt it was in favor of majority women, while leaving out other aspects and marginalization facts for minority women. It makes a sufficient difference when you leave out the details and reality for all women. Because early feminism did not include the reality/view points for minority women.

I believe that this article possesses good sourcing that contained reliable resources, which was cited throughout the article. I checked a few of the citations and the links does work. I think that the layout/format of the article was organized and not all over the place like some articles that I’ve read on Wikipedia. I thought that the “future reading” section was necessary, because some readers may want to continue to read common articles to gender and development, and not know which readings to read. The “future reading” section can help direct readers to another relevant source.

On the talk page, I was able to see how the Wiki editors worked behind the scenes and to see the process of the editing. From my understanding there hasn’t been any discussion on the talk page since 2014. I was expecting more recent activity on the talk page. I expected the editors to have discussed the article this year; being that, ideals, beliefs, and facts are always changing. Although, I did see that the last edit to the article was made a couple of days ago (I believe that this is where I am confused; the layout of the talk page.) This article is apart of a Wiki-Project, “a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of international development, including such areas as appropriate technology, microfinance and social issues, on Wikipedia.” However, the article has not yet received a rating on the quality and importance scale; which makes me curious on the reason for that. I would assume that the topics in this article about gender and development was important and relevant enough in today’s society to have received a rating. Some of the conversations that are being discussed on the talk page are around editing, adding, and adjusting the format to better improve the quality of the article.

 ADDED CITATION: 

I added the citation from chapter 3 in the book "Gender, Development and Globalization: Economics as if All People Mattered" because I felt that it was relevant to the section "Gender, financial crises, and neoliberal economic policy" in this article. The sentences from chapter 3 that I felt was relevant was; "Women's higher skill levels, along with the modest success of anti-discrimination policies, have opened up professional employment opportunities for educated women in many countries. This trend may be viewed as a vindication for feminist movements that have sought access to paid employment for women on equal terms since the nineteenth century. For less educated women, on the other hand, the pressure to earn an income has often led to employment in precarious and unstable conditions." (pg 112-113).

The section that I felt this citation from the book should be added is after the statement from this article stating, "the global financial crisis and the following politics of austerity have opened up a wide range of gender and feminist debates on neoliberalism and the impact of the crisis on women. One view is that the crisis has affected women disproportionately and that there is a need for alternative economic structures in which investment in social reproduction needs to be given more weight." I believe that this citation talks about how the global financial crisis has affected women disproportionately.