Empowering rural women for change in a Millennium Village in Uganda

Women empowerment has remained a thorny issue in the development juggernaut. Feminists and development practitioners alike are not certain of and are overly divided over how it actually looks like and how to achieve it. More perplexing is the empowerment of rural women who suffer multiple handicaps and face diversely complex vulnerabilities. This study found significant improvements visibly taking place in the lives of rural women as they interacted with the Millennium Village Project. The appeal of a global project was spurring the rural community to new learning opportunities and insight that were vital in the slowly emerging process of challenging and deconstructing the prejudicial gender constructions that had historically and structurally disempowered women. Although the sustainability of the gains accruing to women remains debatable, it is not implausible to suggest that the MVP has catapulted the whole village to a fresh wave of optimism and confidence-pivotal ingredients in any effort of empowering the hitherto vulnerable rural women and the entire society.