Empowering women through education: Experiences from Dalit women in Nepal

In the international arena education is often put forward as the main strategy for achieving women's empowerment and gender equality. However, exactly what it means to be empowered and how education interacts with different aspects of empowerment remains ill-defined. This paper explores empowerment as experienced by educated women from a disadvantaged socio-economic background in Nepal. It examines how family relations and social expectations can constrain or promote feelings of empowerment. It is argued that, although education is potentially a powerful empowering factor, it cannot be viewed in isolation from social influences and intimate relations most important to women's lives.