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The term "empowerment" has become increasingly common in the past decades and been defined and used in different ways. This book analyzes the process of women´s empowerment by taking a postmodern feminist approach to situate women´s narratives and experience in the context of rural Cambodia. It provides a detailed analysis of a case study of the village, which has actively participated in agricultural extension work and setting up community based organizations. Women´s participation in group activities contributed to improving agricultural practice and access to financial resources. The satisfaction lead to women´s continuous engagement in such activities and women expressed their increase sense of self-worth. As a result, the community experienced improvements in women´s status such as more women taking leadership role, appreciation to women´s engagement in public, and decreased domestic violence. Both women and men describe such changes by challenging some old ideologies that restricted women´s activities. This study shows that women´s empowerment process can be conceptualized and possible to set a framework for assessing impacts of development activities.

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Ayako Hiwasa is a practitioner committed to ethnographic praxis as the starting point for systemic change to overcome structural inequity. She has spent four years working in Cambodia in various fields. She holds dual master degrees in International Health and International Cooperation Policy in which she wrote this book as the master thesis.

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