| Women's Political Empowerment and Leadership |
| Rationale: |
The 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments have accorded Indian women a scope for political representation. Despite such provisions, most of them face constraints in pursuing a political career due to various personal, social and institutional reasons. They are generally asked to contest because the seat is reserved for a woman candidate. In reality, they receive little support in exercising their mandate, which demotivates them to participate politically. The sustainability and legitimacy of the local governance structures depends on the capacities of the women, but one finds that women are unable to play an active role in governance and get confined to taking part in only the electoral processes, if at all. Gendered identities and practices limit their capacities to articulate and act upon their claims and concerns. |
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Given the present scenario, political representation in numbers alone cannot be a sufficient mechanism for women to exercise their agency. Years of discrimination have incapacitated them to articulate the priorities of their constituency and influence the decision-making. They need skills, knowledge and information to express their concerns and influence the decision-making processes as per their concerns. |
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PRIA’s familiarity with the constituency over the years, years of experience on panchayat leadership and strengthening of women collective---Nari Network in Haryana---would help in conducting the programme easily in Haryana. Innovative measures undertaken to address the need of women leaders, previous project on Rapid Literacy Programme in Govindgarh and Jhunjhunu provided a point of entry to these locations in Rajasthan. The mandate of 50 per cent reservation to women in panchayats and municipalities in Bihar gives a reason to strengthen the leadership of women more intensively in this state. Nurturing of women leadership by strengthening networks of elected representatives (ERs) and women collectives (e.g., SHGs) and citizen leaders, already established network of women in Gujarat, which needs to be strengthened more intensively. |
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It is expected that PRIA shall work in four states building upon the initiatives of the last year in terms of: |
• Scaling up of project in terms of numbers. PRIA will include in the target group those who could not attend training programme due to constraints of family or other factors. However, those who were disqualified due to lack of skills will not be considered |
• Using the women trained in the last programme as resource persons in training sessions, heading networks and making spaces for the new women to be engaged in a practical way in the networking building. |
• Greater focus on capacity building within the field-level interventions as compared to structured interventions, which is a crucial learning from last year’s experience. |
• PRIA will also take into account state-specific impact in the context of elections to be held. For example in Rajasthan, PRIA will support women to contest elections. In other states where elections have been held, PRIA will network with women to demand specific training needs from the government towards their growth and development. |
• The strategy for the year will also cater to those women who have higher ambition and wish to contest elections beyond the local level. |
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This project is the extension of the last year’s Women Political Empowerment and Leadership (WPEL). PRIA’s past experience of its ongoing work with women leaders in the WPEL programme clearly indicate the key challenges that restrict women leaders to participate in the political processes of governance, either as elected leaders or as community leaders. |
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One of the most important learnings was to assess the methodology PRIA would now adopt in taking this process forward in reaching out to many more women. However, it is not just a reaching out and touching the lives of these women but more importantly having a positive impact on their future and their ambitions. This would imply: |
a) Strengthening of the network of women leaders through sustained efforts at the field level, in order that women effectively get ground to practice and demonstrate their skills as change agents. |
b) Engaging networks formed into issue-based campaigning that would not only help in mobilising the constituency before the next round of elections, but also help the aspiring politicians to become familiar faces actively involved in development issues. |
c) Using a Campaign Mode of training for certain issues instead of a face to face training approach to cover greater numbers. |
d) Ensuring the quality of the programme by getting women trained in smaller groups on issues like Gender, Personality Development, etc, so as to keep individuals and their specific needs within the training framework |
| e) Reviewing the sites for this years programme in the context of scaling up and addition of new areas to the project. |
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PRIA is proposing a shift from its last year’s skill-building approach. This year PRIA plans to cover women in large numbers. The three-step campaign would have intensive coverage in the form of core women, who would be part of all the three exposure and floating women who might join only one or two steps in the campaigns. The steps of campaigns would be designed such that each campaign would be complete in its own, so that women attending any campaign would have impact that was intended for that level, though a woman attending all three steps would build on the key learnings desired in the project. This is one innovative method that PRIA proposes. |
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| Project Goal: |
•Political empowerment of women leaders with potential leadership capacities in panchayat and municipal areas. |
| Project Purpose: |
•Enhancing skills and knowledge of women leaders for increased participation in political processes. |
•Creating a coalition of institutional support base at local level to sustain efforts for women leadership. |
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Project Locations: |
State | District | Block /Municipality | | Bihar | Jehanabad | | | Haryana | Mahendargarh | | | | Sonepat | | | Rajasthan | Jhunjhunu | Narnaul | | | Govindgarh | | | Chhattisgarh | Korba | | |
