Knowledge Encounters and Lived Experiences: Exploring Women's Trajectories Toward Empowerment in Danish Women's Shelters

Abstract

This article examines how recognition and epistemic and institutional dynamics shape women's trajectories toward empowerment in Danish women's shelters. Drawing on 15 in-depth interviews with current and former shelter residents, it explores how professional and lived knowledge interact and are negotiated within shelter encounters. The analytical concept of knowledge encounters developed captures how power, recognition, and meaning are coproduced through these interactions. Findings reveal that empowerment emerges through dialogical sensemaking and access to epistemic and material resources, yet remains conditioned by institutional norms of autonomy and self-responsibility. The study advances feminist social work by illuminating the epistemic dimensions of support and empowerment.

Keywords

domestic violence women's shelters knowledge encounters lived experiences empowerment

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