Title: “We have to empower them” – A user study of a library in a Women’s Resource Centre in South India
We have both had a fascination for India since childhood, but none of us had ever been there. Therefore, we were very happy to receive a scholarship from SIDA to go to India and conduct a Minor Field Study (MFS) in a women’s resource centre’s library. Both of us also have an interest in gender issues, which is why we wanted to have some kind of gender perspective on our study. We went to the state of Kerala in South India for six weeks between January and March 2006. Before leaving Sweden, we were both curious about how a library in India can function, and we got a tip from a researcher that the women’s organization SAKHI had a library that might be of interest for us. The SAKHI library is a special library and it is focused on documents concerning women’s issues from a feminist perspective. This made us even more interested, since women’s issues and feminism still are controversial in India.
Contents
1 INTRODUCTION
1.2 Aim
1.3 Questions at issue
1.4 Word definitions
1.5 Who did what?
1.6 The thesis’ disposition
2 PREVIOUS RESEARCH AND CONTEXT OF THE STUDY
2.1 Previous research concerning women’s issues
2.2 Previous research on the SAKHI library
2.3 The development of literacy
2.4 The development of libraries
3 METHOD
3.1 Problems concerning our choice of literature
4 EMPOWERMENT AND INFORMATION THEORIES
4.1 The history of the Empowerment concept
4.2 Empowerment
4.3 Library access and empowerment
5 RESULTS
5.1 SAKHI
5.2 Our own impression of the libraries in Kerala
5.3 Five users of the SAKHI library
5.3.1 Interview with Fulki
5.3.2 Interview with Geeta
5.3.3 Interview with Poona
5.3.4 Interview with Yamini
5.3.5 Interview with Reena
6 ANALYSIS
6.1 The definitions of power
6.1.1 Power over
6.1.2 Power to
6.1.3 Power with
6.1.4 Power from within
6.2 The concept of Empowerment
6.2.1 Personal Empowerment
6.2.2 Relational Empowerment
6.2.3 Collective Empowerment
6.2.4 The informants’ conception of Women Empowerment
6.2.5 The informants’ view of the connection between Women Empowerment and the SAKHI library
6.3 Library access and empowerment
6.3.1 User access to the library and its collections
6.3.2 Connections between information and empowerment
7 CONCLUDING DISCUSSION
7.1 Main conclusions
7.2 Further discussion
8 PROPOSED FURTHER RESEARCH
9 SUMMARY
10 LITERATURE
10.1 Non-printed literature
10.2 Printed literature
APPENDIX: THE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
Author: Jorstedt, Frida, Nyhlén, Zelina
Source: University of Boras
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