Pathways to Women’s Empowerment Program

AUC's Social Research Center and five partner academic institutions around the world are currently involved in a five-year research project to examine the factors that lead to women's empowerment.

As a prominent research center in the region since 1953, AUC’s Social Research Center (SRC) conducts and encourages multidisciplinary social science research, trains researchers, and guides and assists graduate students, scholars and organizations engaged in social science research in the region.

One of SRC’s current research projects is a five-year, million dollar program titled “Pathways to Women’s Empowerment.” This program – which examines the pre-conditions that must be present for women’s development to be successful in different cultural, linguistic and political contexts -- is part of a global initiative funded by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) with partner academic institutions in the UK, Brazil, Pakistan and Ghana.

“The global dimension is what’s interesting about this project,” said Hania Sholkamy, assistant research professor and SRC project manager for Pathways to Women’s Empowerment. “We are an equal member within a consortium of international research centers and universities. This forces us to think globally, even if we do our work locally.”

To ensure the regional relevance of the project, SRC has also secured the collaboration of other centers in Palestine, Sudan and Yemen.

“We are nearing one century of feminism and women’s empowerment movements,” said Hania Sholkamy, assistant research professor and SRC project manager for Pathways to Women’s Empowerment. “Some things have worked, others have not. We need to look at these actions and movements and conduct a systematic enquiry into the catalysts of change in favor of women’s empowerment that have had broader transformative effects in reducing poverty, inequality and injustice.”