The West Africa Hub of the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment Research Programme Consortium (RPC) is based at the Centre for Gender Studies and Advocacy, University of Ghana.
Partners include: Initiative for Women’s Studies in Nigeria, ABANTU for Development, University of Sierra Leone and independent researchers.Their research strategy focuses on three Anglophone West African countries -Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. It takes as its starting point the difference between the concepts of and ideas about “women’s empowerment” that drive international development policy and the lived experiences of women themselves in this region. The West Africa Hub engages with popular culture and works with policy makers and women themselves to identify and track conceptions of empowerment visible in policies, as well as to explore how projects framed around particular conceptions of empowerment play out in practice.
Their research projects include:
- Inter-Generational Perspectives on Women’s Lives and Empowerment (A Pilot Survey Project)
- Interrogating Policy Discourses and Practice on Women’s Empowerment in Ghana
- Women District Assembly Members
- Changing Representations of Women in Popular Culture
- Expanding the Space for Women’s Empowerment in Contemporary Nigeria
- Interrogating discourses of Empowerment in Pre and Post-war Sierra Leone
- Continuity and Change in the Lives of Ghanaian Market women
- Sexuality and Empowerment: The Case of Anita Hogan
- Grassroots Politics: The Push for Women’s Representation at the Ward Level in Post-War Sierra Leone.
Their website hosts a blog with news reports, articles, links to interesting articles that reflect the work of the research programme, and information on activities within the West Africa Hub.