Strategic Gendering As Capability: One Lens Into the Complexity of Powerlessness. (The Works of Martha C. Nussbaum: Feminism and Liberalism; History, Identity and Sexuality; Gender and Development‪)‬

In her influential work on capabilities, Women and Human Development, (1) Martha Nussbaum addresses questions that cut across diverse framings and philosophical conceptions, even as her project is to exit the confinements of these conceptions. Her conceptual exit aims at a precise locating of the core elements that should be at work in our understanding of human development: the individual as a bearer of capabilities that ought to be realized. These core elements should be recognized normatively and politically. (2) More specifically, her work establishes a norm: the right of women to be what they can be. I intersect with this proposition. But I start from and arrive at conceptual grounds that diverge from Nussbaum's. This divergence in beginnings and endings can coexist with that shared point of intersection: the recognition of individuals as bearers of capabilities. The divergence stems partly from our different disciplines and partly from substantive differences in focus. Nussbaum's concern in Women and Human Development is to recover the individual, in this case women, as the bearer of capabilities. (3) My concern is to recover the larger assemblage of actors and conditions within which this individual can become a bearer of capabilities.