The Role of Power in Empowerment
Reclaiming the Transformative Potential
Empowerment is a fundamental concept in social change and transformative development processes. However, its relationship with power has become diluted over time. While early conceptualisations of empowerment in development discourses were deeply rooted in the notion of power, the term has since been critiqued for losing its radical, transformative edge—particularly following the institutionalisation of empowerment in global development frameworks such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This shift has led to a depoliticisation of empowerment, reducing it to a set of technical interventions rather than a means for structural transformation.
Actors working to empower women must reposition power at the centre of empowerment by drawing on an explanatory framework that conceptualises power across multiple levels of reality. Rather than viewing power solely through the lens of control, this analysis considers power as potential—a dynamic and multi-layered phenomenon that manifests across different social and material dimensions.
Conceptualising Power: From Control to Potential
In conventional political discourse, power is often understood in terms of control—either as domination over others or as influence within a system. However, at a deeper ontological level, power can be understood as potential. The Latin root of the word power, potare, translates to potential, signifying an inherent capacity for action, transformation, and change.
From this perspective, empowerment involves increasing an individual’s or community’s transformative potential rather than merely redistributing control. This means that for empowerment to occur, individuals must gain access to the mechanisms that enable transformation in their lives and communities. This potential may or may not be realised, but its existence is fundamental to any meaningful conceptualisation of empowerment.
A Stratified Understanding of Power
A critical realist perspective allows for a stratified understanding of power, recognising its manifestations at different levels of reality. These levels help distinguish between the deeper causal mechanisms of power and the observable effects of empowerment processes.
The Empirical Level – This is where power is directly observable. In the context of empowerment, power at this level manifests in four key ways:
Access to resources (material power)
Inner strength and confidence (psychosocial power)
Freedom within social structures (institutional power)
Collaborative capacity (relational power)
The Actual Level – This refers to the broader patterns of power that structure society, often shaping the conditions in which empowerment occurs. Power at this level is less immediately observable but manifests in structural inequalities, social hierarchies, and systemic oppression. This is also where intersectionality plays a crucial role, demonstrating how different social locations interact to shape access to power. Importantly, intersectionality must be understood as context-specific; an individual's experience of power and oppression varies across different social, political, and economic environments.
The Real Level – At the deepest level, power exists as a generative mechanism that enables or constrains transformation. This level is where power is most fundamentally conceptualised as potential. Within empowerment processes, the presence of this potential—regardless of whether it is actualised—determines an individual’s capacity for change.
The Four Dimensions of Power in Empowerment
Within a critical realist framework, empowerment can be analysed through four interconnected dimensions of power, each corresponding to a specific plane of reality:
Power For (Material Plane) – This dimension refers to an individual’s or group’s access to resources within the material world. Material power enables basic survival, economic independence, and access to essential goods and services.
Power Within (Embodied Plane) – This dimension relates to the psychosocial aspects of empowerment, including self-confidence, critical awareness, and the ability to navigate social structures. It reflects the internalised capacity for agency and transformation.
Power To (Structural Plane) – This dimension pertains to institutional power, or the freedom to act within a given social structure. It includes political representation, legal rights, and economic participation, determining the extent to which individuals can exercise agency within a society.
Power With (Relational Plane) – This refers to the collective power that emerges from social relationships and collaboration. It is through ‘power with’ that individuals and communities can mobilise, share knowledge, and drive systemic change at scale.
Repositioning Power in Empowerment Discourses
Recognising the multi-dimensional nature of power allows for a more nuanced and comprehensive approach to empowerment. Instead of viewing power in binary terms—either possessed or not possessed—this approach acknowledges its dynamic, context-dependent, and evolving nature.
Empowerment, therefore, must be understood not merely as an outcome but as an ongoing process of increasing transformative potential across these multiple dimensions. This reconceptualisation moves beyond narrow, instrumental definitions of empowerment and restores its original radical intent: to challenge structures of oppression, enable agency, and foster systemic change.
By putting power back into empowerment, we can reclaim its transformative potential. A critical realist framework enables us to see empowerment as more than access to resources or participation in decision-making processes; it is fundamentally about expanding the potential for transformation at multiple levels of reality. Understanding power as potential rather than control allows us to move beyond depoliticised, technocratic approaches to empowerment and instead focus on fostering conditions that enable true agency and change. This perspective is essential for designing interventions that go beyond surface-level empowerment to address the deeper structural and ontological dimensions of social transformation.