Revisiting Empowerment: How Black women define, experience, and challenge psychological empowerment theory.

McKissic, Angel (2025). Revisiting Empowerment: How Black women define, experience, and challenge psychological empowerment theory. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

Psychological empowerment is a construct that shapes social understandings of agency, resilience, and self-determination across various contexts. However, existing literature often overlooks the unique experiences of Black women, whose empowerment journeys are shaped by intersecting social, political, and cultural forces. This thesis seeks to address this gap by centering the voices of Black women to provide a more nuanced understanding of psychological empowerment. This study uses Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to explore how Black women define, experience, and interpret empowerment in their everyday lives. IPA is a qualitative methodology that privileges idiosyncratic meaning-making and employs interpretative analysis whereby the researcher saturates themselves within the life world of participants’ experiential account to yield rich, nuanced, and often contradictory findings of a given phenomenon. This project is also grounded in the theoretical frameworks of radical qualitative inquiry, Black feminist qualitative methods, and Intimate Inquiry.

The findings of this project challenge theoretical models of psychological empowerment by revealing their dynamic, context-specific nature. Key themes include the significance of relationality, the impact of spiritual practices, and the role of the socio-political context in shaping empowerment experiences. Most significantly, spirituality and encounters with the natural world emerge as critical forces of motivation, inspiration, and reflection which inform the contours of psychological empowerment, dimensions not previously accounted for in the theoretical literature. These insights invite the reader to rethink psychological empowerment alongside the experiential accounts the participants provide. By amplifying Black women’s voices, this thesis provides a critical intervention in empowerment discourse, challenging existing paradigms and offering new pathways for scholarly inquiry and practical application.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):