Women's Empowerment Practices in Latin America

Through a brief presentation of the debates regarding the concept of women's empowerment and the insertion of the term in the perspective of gender studies, this article presents a bibliographical review of the women's empowerment practices in Latin America between 2002 and 2012. The categories of analysis encountered in these practices were the following: empowerment based on women's income, practices originating in women's daily activities and strategies based on women's groups, with valorization according to specificities. It was possible to observe the convergence between the results and the classic debates regarding the term, the need to insert the gender debate into women's empowerment practices, and, as the main result, there has been an expressive number of practices based on workshops and other group strategies, aimed at the understanding of empowerment as a process permeated and nurtured by collective construction, reinforcing historical perspectives of feminism.