Empowering women in rural development : a collaborative action research project in northern Thailand

  • Avorn Sansak

Western Sydney University thesis: Doctoral thesis

Abstract

The development policy and plans of the Thai government have emphasized economic growth aimed at 'modernising' the country, enacted through agricultural modernisation and industrialisation under the name 'rural development'. Women In Development (WID) approaches based on the modernisation model have been added to 'development' plans more recently. Examination of the effects of these WID programmes upon rural women demonstrates that poor women are disempowered by the 'top-down' rural development programmes. This study is an attempt to test collaborative action research (CAR) as a methodology to empower rural women to become the decision makers in the rural development process. CAR was carried out in Sandee Village, northern Thailand. This suggests that rural women can be empowered through continuous cycles of the collaborative learning process of planning, acting, observing and critical reflection with the researcher acting as a facilitator. Through this learning process, rural women have increased their capacity to make choices, to deal with existing constraints and to create changes. In this respect 'development' can be initiated from within.
Date of Award1996
Original languageEnglish

Keywords

  • women in rural development
  • rural women
  • empowerment of women
  • rural development
  • Thai women
  • collaborative action research
  • Thailand

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