Exploring the future of women in Sierra Leone: a futures literacy action-research project
Lead institution(s)
Summary
Gender and women’s empowerment is a pillar of Sierra Leone’s Agenda for Prosperity, but there is still much work to be done toward this end.Read more
Gender and women’s empowerment is a pillar of Sierra Leone’s Agenda for Prosperity, but there is still much work to be done toward this end. This action-research project will test the hypothesis that the systems and processes that shape why and how people imagine the future have significant implications for understanding and potentially altering gender relations and empowering women. It will apply UNESCO’s Future Literacy Laboratories approach in which the participants collaborate on developing scenarios of alternative futures.
These scenarios identify important challenges, possibilities, drives and critical junctions that may affect innovation, market developments and policy choices in the future. Participants will explore the assumptions that frame the future of women in Sierra Leone and the implications these have on perceptions of women’s role in society. This project will connect the local experience with a global community of research and practice, allowing learning to be documented and shared more widely. It will also help establish the conditions for a possible Futures Literacy Centre at the University of Makeni.
