inclusion

The project experience clearly indicates that in order to be impactful, the project design should involve multidimensional approaches that address both the practical and structural challenges, ranging from individual capacity gaps to overall gender discrimination and institutionalized exclusion, which constrain women’s voice, decision-making and leadership. In the present case, the Implementing Partner was successful in maintaining a dual focus on promoting women’s political participation through building women’s capacity and awareness of their rights and connecting them to key decision-making processes on the one hand and engaging with the Musahar community, particularly men, to address gender discrimination through sensitization sessions.

Strategic engagement with the media can yield good results in amplifying voices of the marginalized, providing them with a platform to address wider audience to promote gender responsive and inclusive local governance and development. In the present case, the project engaged the media successfully to widely disseminate the project initiatives as well as leverage it as an accountability mechanism for following up with government officials on their promised actions in promoting inclusive local governance.

As the project experience indicates, engaging a community representative organization like the National Musahar Association is an effective strategy to build trust and gain access to the community focused on by the project.

An effective way to address the structural barriers that marginalized women may face in accessing formal political space, is to start with building localized platforms and relevant capacities and gradually scaling up the effort to connect to formal institutional structures. In the present project, this was demonstrated successfully by the creation of the local Women Musahar Empowerment Forums which were eventually scaled up to district-level platforms as well as connected to the National Musahar Association.

Supporting government institutions in becoming gender responsive and inclusive requires substantial efforts in institutional capacity building through sensitization, training and equipping government officials with tools and skills to carry out gender responsive planning and governance. In the present project, while the project was successful in sensitizing local government officials, focused institutional capacity building could have contributed to a more impactful and sustainable change.

A multi-level approach that engages stakeholders from the grassroots level to the institutional level ensures consistency and has a higher chance of success in enhancing women’s political participation. In this case, the project engaged rural communities, traditional leaders, electoral management bodies, public institutions, and the government. This comprehensive engagement enabled a concerted effort to enhance women’s political participation in the subsequent elections.

Community sensitization via WhatsApp proved less effective than face-to-face meetings, as it excluded individuals without smartphones and those with lower levels of literacy. Due to the COVID-19 lockdown, the project adapted community sensitization meetings to a remote format. The grantee produced brief videos on gender equality and the importance of women’s participation in decision-making processes, disseminating these to project beneficiaries. While this method ensured the continuation of project activities during the lockdown, it is not recommended as a model for replication, except in similar situations where in-person engagement is unfeasible, as it failed to effectively reach all community members.