The series Empowering Women Worldwide aims to bring insights into women's empowerment experience from an interdisciplinary perspective. Empowerment must build the ability of women to think critically about oppressive ideology and practices and encourage them to firmly resist the forces that desire to isolate and silence them. Empowerment has been often referred to as a process through which people gain control over their own lives and life environment.

Empowerment aims to reduce the powerlessness that has been created by negative valuations in the society. The book in this series will raise several fundamental questions on women's empowerment and national and international policy for furthering research and action studies to improve women's quality of life.

It is our contention that the voice of oppressed and marginalized groups must be heard if they are to become empowered. Such empowerment is necessary to avoid cases of distortes development, that is , to aviod situations in which there is extreme poverty and gender inequality in the midst of economic affluence. It is our conviction that empowerment of women will tilt the balance of power in favour of gender justice and distributive justice. We hope the books in this series will provide valuable insights for researchers, social welfare workers and policy-makers to identify factors and processes that may contribute to higher levels of development and seeks to raise social consciousness on women, redefine agendas and rethink strategies that will empower women worldwide. In today's knowledge economy, analysis of the process of empowerment is a key to progress. This series is a humble contribution in this direction.