‘Who Holds Power in Organisations?’ - Nisha Dhawan’s article in the India Development Review

Posted 19 October 2020 in EMpower News   |   Share

Nisha Dhawan, India Country Director at EMpower, recently wrote a timely and incisive piece on ‘Who Holds Power in Organisations?’ which was featured in India Development Review, India’s first and largest independent media platform for the development community.

The article urges us to rethink the relationship between gender and power, especially in light of COVID-19. At EMpower, we have always put girls at the center of our work. The pandemic has reproduced cycles of oppression in more amplified ways for girls. And as as we look at the long road ahead with regards to addressing these gender inequalities laid even more bare now, it is equally critical to think about building and sustaining an organisational culture rooted in the feminist principles of ‘power to’.

Using the example of the Girls Advisory Council, which strongly illustrates how we create spaces to center girls, Nisha suggests a framework for moving from the model of ‘power over’ to ‘power to’ and underscores the importance of shared power if we really want to build back better.

You can read the article here.