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Empowerment

 

Brief summary
 

The term empowerment is not clearly defined and has several meanings that differ slightly. Perhaps in its simplest form, empowerment means ‘enabling someone to do something that they weren’t able to do or didn’t know they could do’.

 

Many people in the areas we work in experience the disempowering effects of health, food, and transport poverty. Transport poverty in the local area is widespread as there is a lack of reliable, cheap and frequent busses, the nearest train station is often far away, the cost of owning a car is too high for many and large motorways run through communities, which makes it harder and less pleasant to walk or cycle between them.

 

Higher crime rates, low education scores, and fewer opportunities to access any or good positions in the job market or other opportunities also disempower many local communities. Relatively few people vote in the area, reducing the democratic power of some residents.

 

We empower people in many ways such as:

 

We provide free bikes and maintenance mentoring services via our On Bikes project, empowering people to travel healthily and freely.

 

We run a veg-barra, community meals and a community farm via our Blackhill’s Growing project, empowering people to navigate food insecurity with dignity.

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Our gender-based violence (GBV) prevention initiatives provide people with empowering tools to address many issues related to gender-based violence.  

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Our Molendinar Community centre provides people with a warm, welcoming space in which many activities take place, empowering them to foster new connections and tackle loneliness, learn new skills and organise events.

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Comprehensive Version

 

Empowerment​​​​​​​​​​

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Empowerment has been described as a term without a clear definition (Page and Czuba, 1999) and a concept that doesn’t necessarily denote the same goals or the same practice in different  fields (Tengland, 2007). This lack of clarity is also mirrored in its definitions. For instance, the Merriam-Webster (2024) dictionary defines empowerment by referring to rather vague terms such as ‘various’  and ‘something’. It also uses the term ‘empowerment’ itself to define the concept, further highlighting the difficulty in explaining the concept in a concise and easy manner:

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  1. The act or action of empowering someone or something: the granting of the power, right, or authority to perform various acts or duties.

  2. The state of being empowered to do something: the power, right, or authority to do something.​

 

Tengland (2007) describes empowerment as:

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‘control over life or health, autonomy, ability, self-efficacy, self-esteem, and freedom.‘

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Page and Czuba (1999) define empowerment as:

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 ‘a multi-dimensional social process that helps people gain control over their own lives.’

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Salge et al. (2014) state:

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‘empowerment is a measure of both the control an agent has over its environment, as well as its ability to sense this control’.

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Perhaps, what the definitions above illustrate is that empowerment can be used in different ways and applied differently in different situations. It is this rather simple and liberal application of the term that will be used below. However, one should remain cognisance of the complexities, limitations and variations of the definitions of the term.

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Examples of Local Conditions and their potential Disempowering Effects

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  • The areas SPYF works in achieve very unfavourable scores on a wide variety of health, economic and social measures as exemplified by their persistent low scores on the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (2020, 2016, 2012), indicating that many of the indicators cited below are unlikely to have changed substantially since they were measured. This is particularly likely considering the negative socio-economic effects of recent events such as austerity (Broadbent et al., 2024; Stuckler et al., 2017) and the cost of living crisis (Broadbent et al., 2023).

  • Child poverty: 36.8% of children in North East Glasgow are in poverty, 99% higher than the Scottish average (Understanding Glasgow, 2011). The high rates of child poverty may have a disempowering effect on children and young people’s ability to participate in certain social, educational and cultural activities due to the costs associated with such as activities.

  • Health: Comparatively poor public health is very prevalent in many communities in North East Glasgow, an issue that is further outlined in the exercise and eating sections of this website. For instance, alcohol-related hospital admissions, rates of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), coronary heart disease and life expectancy are worse in Blackhill and Barmulloch East compared to the Scottish average (Public Health Scotland, 2022). Poor health may have disempowering effects on people as their ability to move and participate in activities may be substantially reduced.

  • Disability: 25.4% of people indicated to be limited ‘a little’ or ‘a lot’ by a disability in North East Glasgow, 30% higher than the Scottish average. For Blackhill and Hogganfield, this figure was at 25.2%, 11% higher than the average for Glasgow as a whole (Understanding Glasgow, 2011). High rates of disability may reduce peoples’ power to participate in social, cultural, economic and other activities as some places may not meet the needs of people with disabilities.

  • Education: 39% of adults in North East Glasgow had qualifications at Higher level and above, 22% less than the Scottish average. In Blackhill and Hogganfield, the rate of young people not in education, employment or training was 25% higher compared to the Glasgow average in 2011 (Understanding Glasgow, 2011). S4 tariff scores were the lowest in North East Glasgow of all the areas measured by the Scottish Public Health Observatory (2010). Positions of power and relative power - i.e. those in financial institution, legal services, government, policy development and managerial professions - often require higher levels of education, meaning that people in local areas may have fewer chances to occupy positions of power.

  • Employment:  Fewer people in Glasgow (74.4%) are economically active compared to Scotland (77.5%) and Great Britain (78.8%) (ONS, 2024). These figures resonate with older statistics which show that North East Glasgow has much higher rates of people in income deprivation (+86%), people in employment deprivation (+77%), and people claiming out-of-work benefits (+74%), compared to the Scottish Average (Understanding Glasgow, 2011), highlighting that the long-standing character of the problem. Lower rates of employment may have a disempowering effect as it may reduce peoples’ abilities to leave unfavourable financial conditions.

  • Crime: In 2023-24, Glasgow City recorded 812 crimes per 10’000 population, compared to 550 in Scotland overall. Of the 32 Scottish Local authorities, Glasgow ranked the second highest for crime (Scottish Government, 2024). Similarly, the North East ward recorded a crime rate of 109 per 1000 in 2022. For comparison, the Partick East/Kelvindale ward recorded a rate of 54 per 1000 (Galloway, 2024). Higher crime rates may limit people’s power to move around freely and securely, which may particularly intersect with several dimension associated with  gender-based-violence (GBV).

  • Food: Food poverty is relatively widespread in the UK as exemplified by the rapid rise in foodbank use over past decades and the poor nutritional profile of a high proportion of the food that is consumed in Glasgow, Scotland and the UK as outlined in the eating section of this webpage. Access to adequate food represents a very basic right (OHCHR, n.d.; United Nations, 1999) and the situation in the UK has been criticized by the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights (UN, 2019). Limited and insecure access to food hinders individuals’ ability to participate in societal life on a very fundamental level.

  • Democratic participation: In 2019, the voter turnout in the Glasgow North East constituency for the UK general election was 55.5%, the 15th lowest in the UK overall (McInnes, 2020). While North East Glasgow was not represented in the top 30 of UK constituencies with the lowest turnout in 2024 (Sturge, 2024), this may be due to the fact that voter turnout generally declined in the UK overall (Lait, 2024; Sturge, 2024). In North East Glasgow, participation declined to 47.0% (UK Parliament, 2024). The lowest turnout may have been achieved in a council by-election in July 2024, where only 12.4% of the electorate cast their vote in the North East ward (Ballot Box Scotland, 2024). Such poor election turnout may limit collective bargaining power as local votes may lessen the impact the area has on UK-wide, national and local elections results and political representatives may only represent a limited proportion of local residents.

  • Transport: 45.1% of households in North East Glasgow had one or more cars in 2011, 35% less than the Scottish average (Understanding Glasgow, 2011). Large roadways (i.e. M8, M80) dissect the area, hindering movements for those relying on walking, cycling or wheeling to move around the area. The high volumes of traffic in the area are exemplified through the Scottish Noise Map (Scottish Government, 2021), which shows that vehicular traffic produces sound levels above the levels recommended by the World Health Organisation (World Health Organisation, 2018). Moreover, high transport fares have been reported by local newspapers (i.e. (Glasgow Times, 2024)) and local residents we work with. Reduced access to transport may result in transport poverty, which may limit people’s ability to reach economic, health, social, cultural and other facilities and consequently lead to negative outcomes, including unemployment, reduced participation in education and training, and reduced health service usage (Lucas et al., 2016; Mattioli et al., 2018). Transport may thus affect all the unfavourable conditions listed above. Some of the connections between transport and one’s ability to participate in social, cultural, health, and economic activities have also been recognised in the National Transport Strategy 2 (Transport Scotland, 2020).

  • Notably, other factors may further intersect with the above as different demographics are differently affected by issues related to health, transport, gender-based violence, crime, and labour-market opportunities. The protected characteristics outlined in the Equality Act (2010) – age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion and belief, sex and sexual orientation  - are of particular interest here as the act states that it against the law to discriminate against because of them (UK Government, 2024).

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Our Response​​​

  • We offer a wide range of empowering activities to counteract the effects of the factors listed above.

  • Our On Bikes project provides local communities with cheap access to bikes, training and maintenance, empowering them to improve their health through exercise and move around freely and cheaply. Having access to more reliable forms of transport may affect many of the factors above, i.e. access to employment opportunities, reducing the costs to access cultural, social and educational opportunities in other parts of the region

  • Our gender-based violence prevention (GBV) activities empower local communities to counteract and actively engage with gender-based violence.

  • Our growing and food project empowers people to counteract the effects of food poverty.

  • Bolt FM empowers young people by providing amplifying local voices via the medium of radio

  • Our Molendinar Community Centre empowers local communities by allowing them greater democratic participation (i.e. by providing a space for the local community council to meet); foster social connections (i.e. at Mollie’s Diner); carry out activities (i.e. via reduced hire spaces); and exercise more (i.e. via the gym Diamond Cut Training).

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References

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We are a Living Wage Employer logo.png

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Scottish Charity: SC042570​

30 Langdale Street

G33 1Dl, Glasgow

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