advocacy

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.

Women particularly from poor or marginalized groups may have very limited capacity or confidence to engage in public life. Support for women’s capacity development is therefore critical and needs to be continuous, taking place at multiple levels recognizing the linkages between individual and collective empowerment. In the present case, while the Implementing Partner had undertaken some individual capacity initiatives, there is clear case that these efforts need to be continuous, consistent and carried over a longer period of time for impact.

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.

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.