Adaptive Preferences and Women's Empowerment

This book explores the phenomenon of "adaptive preferences" among women and other oppressed groups, in which they collude with the forces that perpetuate their injustice. The author offers a definition of adaptive preferences and a moral framework for responding to them in development practice. She argues that public institutions should conduct interventions to transform the adaptive preferences of deprived people, while still respecting culturally variant conceptions of the good. The book provides real-world examples and moves beyond debates about internalized oppression, relativism, and feminism.