Empowerment of the marginalized

Empowerment is a political process. The core idea of empowerment lies in the dynamics of sharing, distribution and redistribution of power. According to Max Weber, power is one’s capacity to have control over others and when this capacity to control is legitimized, it becomes authority. The logic of empowerment essentially involves the dynamics of authority. Powerlessness has been legitimized within the given social order. Hence empowerment will mean a process of distribution of power through legitimized means. In human society everybody has no equal authority as people have unequal access to the resources that determine power.

The process of gaining control over self, ideology, material and knowledge resources which determine power may be termed empowerment. Thus the process of gaining control over resources is to be seen within the given context of deprivation, structure of hierarchy and the process of legitimization and reproduction. The civil societies try to ensure the equal access to the resources to the marginalized community that determines power equation with in the society.