Dimensions, manifestations and

perceptions of gender equity

A case study of Gram Vikas, Orissa

R.V.Jayapadma
rvjayapadma@gmail.com

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 Background
•
Concerns about gender equity in discussions and
analyses of NGO actions since the 1970s.
•
Most NGO responses and actions have largely
focused on gender issues in rural communities.
•
NGOs continue to face the challenge of
‘institutionalising’ processes as they ‘withdraw’ or
as their role in the community diminishes.
•
Questions have been raised about the behaviour of
NGOs themselves, and gender issues ‘within’ have
come to the fore.
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 Gram Vikas' Mission and reach
•
To promote processes which are sustainable, socially
inclusive and gender equitable, to enable critical masses of
poor and marginalised rural people or communities to
achieve a dignified quality of life
Gram Vikas is a rural development organisation working in
Orissa, registered as a Society in 1979
It reaches out to over 50,000 families in the hinterlands (40%
ST/SC)
Levels of gender inequity vary among these communities,
characterised by widespread poverty

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 Spread and reach
•
1971-75 Transition from relief action to community
development
•
One of the largest NGOs in Orissa (in terms of
outreach, budget, and staff)
•
Over 500 full-time staff and over 1,000 volunteers
(paid and unpaid) at the village level.
•
Work spread across 20 field offices in 15 districts
•
Women constitute about 25 per cent of the staff, and
are located at all levels of the organisation.
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 Engagement with rural communities
• Work initiated in 11 tribal villages in the Kerandimal hills of
Ganjam district in 1975
• Health services as point of entry - treating and training
people, gradually gaining acceptance and trust
• Levels of indebtedness among the tribal communities were
alarmingly high. People from over 60 villages brought
together to fight against liquor merchants and moneylenders
• Women were at the forefront of this battle, in opposing
manufacture, consumption, sale of liquor in the region.
• Space created to launch long-term development programmes,
promote secure livelihoods and incomes.
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•
Men were linked with banks for small loans.
•
Women and men encouraged to start small savings
•
By early 1980s, a range of interventions initiated in
education for children and adults, community health,
livelihoods promotion, and building people’s organisations
•
No conscious efforts to understand gender dynamics or
differences
•
Biogas promotion initiated in the early 1980s, initially in
non-tribal villages where people had more cattle

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•
Within Gram Vikas, work among tribal communities was
construed as process-oriented ‘software development’, while
biogas promotion was identified as product-oriented
‘hardware development’.
•
Number of staff increased as several educated youth from
the region joined. Local youth were also recruited as
volunteers and facilitators at the village level.
•
Specific efforts were made to recruit women to work with
women at the community level.

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 Integrating hardware and software
•
Organisational characteristics defined by mid-1980s
with the articulation of the mission or mandate,
definition of functional areas and efforts to develop
human resource capacities.
•
MANTRA (Movement and Action Network for
Transformation of Rural Areas) new intervention
pilots initiated in early '90s, focusing on community
development using water supply and sanitation as
the rallying points to bring people together

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 Key principles of MANTRA
•
‘All or none’ - initiation of interventions contingent upon
agreement by every single family in the village
•
Initially separate general bodies for women and men, to
allow women to gain confidence to articulate needs
•
General body of all adult women and men in the village
elects an executive committee, with equal number of men
and women and proportional representation to different
sections of population.
•
Defined plans for sustainability of hardware systems,
creating community funds in each village

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 Interventions 'for women'

Various efforts over a period of time to involve
women at the community level

Specific attention to women’s participation in the
people’s organisation, in the movement against
landlords and liquor merchants.

‘Social forestry’ - Encouraging women to tend a
separate portion of the forest as their own, keeping
watch and distributing benefits

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•
Social forestry programmes and kitchen garden
initiatives led to improved access to fuel and
nutritional intake of families.
•
Later efforts to direct loans for income-generation
activities to women, to ensure better utilisation and
repayment. SHGs exclusively for women.
•
Biogas, piped water supply and sanitation explicitly
reduced drudgery faced by rural women.
•
The toilet and bathing room, creating a sanitary
environment, and gave women privacy.
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 Mobilising women's participation
•
Women’s general body, the mahila samiti - an aggregation
of SHGs in the village, each consisting of 10–15 members,
formed on the basis of household clusters or hamlets.
•
Women’s groups go beyond the narrow definition of
working on savings and credit and take up social action,
including addressing the problems of polygamy, early
marriage, alcohol abuse, wife beating, wage inequity, etc.
•
Women were also trained in non-traditional skills like
masonry, many learnt to ride the bicycle...

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•
SHGs are supported to take on management of their
functions and to augment their incomes through various
activities based on local resources and skills
•
Several groups are linked with bank credit and matching
grant support
•
Support in terms of management trainings, trainings for
income-generating activities, leadership development,
exposure to groups in other villages, etc

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•
SHGs are capacitated to work with anganwadis , auxiliary
nurses, midwives, and public health centres in the areas of
immunisation coverage, antenatal care, running drug
distribution centres, etc.
•
Women also take up responsibilities in monitoring village
schools, ensuring children and teachers attend school
regularly, participating in parent–teacher meetings, and
helping in accessing facilities for the school both locally and
from the block office.

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Building a gendered environment 'within'
•
First recorded capacity-building workshop for
women staff in 1985
•
Women recruited for interventions in community
mobilisation, education, health, etc.
•
Women staff encouraged/ exhorted to take on
greater responsibilities.
•
Working in remote areas, the security of all staff,
especially women, was a matter of concern, and
special efforts were made to ensure it
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•
Measures included separate accommodation for men
and women in field offices, and ensuring that women
staff were accompanied when they visited remote
villages or when they travelled at late hours.
•
Sporadic efforts to sensitise the rest of the staff about
gender issues were made at meetings and workshops.
•
By and large, however, gender was understood, by
both men and women, as a stand-alone issue
concerning women.

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 Women's Cell
• Women’s Cell formed in 1992 Ford Foundation support to
encourage women staff to come together and discuss issues
of concern.
• Interest tapered as several women felt the process was too
intrusive and men felt alienated by the process
• Over a year later, the Women’s Cell was closed down as the
prime movers left Gram Vikas
• In 1993, the first joint gender-sensitisation workshop was
organised, involving men and women staff
• In 1994, a report documenting the efforts of working with
gender issues in Gram Vikas was prepared
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• Subsequent efforts at addressing gender issues were
sporadic, with a few trainings held here and there.
• In 2000, conscious and deliberate focus on gender triggered
by deputation of a facilitator from Swiss Agency for
Development Cooperation (SDC) to Gram Vikas to facilitate
the gender-sensitisation process.
• An inclusive gender policy was drafted over the course of a
year. This process involved several people in the
organisation across field and office teams, programmes, and
projects.

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 Gram Vikas' Gender Policy (2001)
To promote equality between women and men, enabling them
to become active partners in the process for the achievement
of a life of dignity and the transformation of society.
The gender policy serves as orientation and support in the
achievement of the following objectives:
•
Enhancing equal participation of men and women in a
sustainable process for achieving a life of dignity
•
Empowering women to realise their full potential as human
beings and actors in the development process at par with
men

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•
Mechanisms and structures for the promotion of
gender equality in rural communities were defined
•
Series of gender-awareness and sensitisation
workshops were organised for staff and community
•
Specified codes for ensuring that gender concerns
were addressed in all interventions at the field level
•
Guiding principles for gender-sensitive planning laid
down with strategies and measurable indicators
•
These were embedded within the planning,
monitoring, and documentation system 20
•
Biannual reports on gender issues were prepared
analysing gender-based disaggregated data.
•
Discussions of gender issues backed by empirical
data and not based on intuitive awareness alone.
•
Field staff, initially hostile and defensive, gradually
came to acknowledge the importance of the data.
•
This led to a great deal of questioning and
introspection and provided new insights into
strategising and initiating clearly directed efforts for
addressing issues of gender equity.
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 HR character

Women are in all positions in the field and office, and that
no position is necessarily occupied by men only.

At the level of field project coordinators, the figure is
sharply skewed towards men (>90 per cent).

Taking account of all staff in Gram Vikas, at the field
level and head office, about 25 per cent are women.

There are limitations, related to travel and living in remote
areas with poor facilities (no toilets or water on tap, no
electricity, etc.) and limited connectivity (no roads, no
telephones, etc.).

Middle level faces a serious deficit of women staff
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• At the field level, while male and female staff deal with
community mobilisation jointly,
• men typically handle the physical activities, including
constructing toilets, bathing rooms, water supply systems,
and houses, digging wells and ponds, securing government
funding, etc.,
• while women engage with the ‘softer areas’, such as bringing
women out of their homes, organising savings and credit
groups, talking about health and education issues, etc.

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• Efforts have been made to involve and assign roles to men
and women staff on the basis of their skills and abilities
rather than stereotypical division of functions, but these
attempts are few
• The argument is that male staff cannot talk to or interact with
women because of traditional customs and practices
• One female and one male staff are associated in most
villages where Gram Vikas works. In most cases, the female
staff ends up ‘assisting’ male staff in matters related not only
to work but also in areas like preparing food, cleaning the
office, etc.
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• Resistance to change is rarely explicit but discussions on
gender are often referred to as ‘danger’
• The discourse on dominance by men and discrimination
against women unfolds, and traditional customs and
patriarchal relations are challenged, creates a sense of threat
and alienation, leading to withdrawal.
• There is no follow-up in terms of enabling men and women
to deal with these dilemmas and helping them to bring about
change.
• By going back to the ‘work as usual’ routine after
workshops, old behaviours and attitudes are perpetuated.
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 Issues in institutionalisation
• In an environment where actions such as men and women
sitting on the same mat or women showing their face to
older men are taboo, sitting together and discussing issues
is seen as a step towards changing traditional relations.
• However, women’s participation is often limited to Gram
Vikas-sponsored interventions, rather than extending to
include all aspects of community development.
• The pace of change is set by the community, with
Gram Vikas providing little facilitation. This is
attributed to work pressures of staff, who have to
start motivating residents of other villages and have
less time and energy to nurture ''older'' villages
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•
Gram Vikas through its various interventions creates a
conducive environment for women to develop their skills,
self-confidence, and self-esteem.
•
With the increased participation of women in community
development, women are venturing into ‘men’s domain’.
Their contribution, however, does not seem to be
accompanied by increased control over resources or deeper
involvement in decision making.
• Little or nothing is known about possible changes in
gender relations within the family or about intra-
household collaboration and conflict.
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 Changing from Within to Trigger
Changes Outside
• Gender-sensitisation processes, while building knowledge
and skills and influencing overt attitudes, have stopped
short of triggering fundamental changes in individual and
organisational behaviour.
• Engineering these deep changes in organisations needs
both time and the right kind of sustained facilitation
• Interventions in gender equity by and large continue to be
equated with women’s development programmes.
• Analysis of and reflection on gender concerns on a
continuing basis have been championed by a few
people in Gram Vikas, usually women in leadership
positions, but once they leave the rigour slackens. 28
 To conclude...
• The awareness and questioning of gender issues has also
been kept alive by donors and board members.
• Capacity development of staff in developing conceptual
clarity, gender analysis techniques, gender-sensitive
planning needs to go along with awareness creation.
• It is a long-term process, without the promise of quick
results, but without it, the objectives of a gender-equity
policy cannot be achieved.
• Intervening to change deep structures takes time and
resources. Gram Vikas needs to spell out how far and how
deep it would like to go.
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