The Changing Perceptions of Poor Women towards Community Participation and Women's Organizations: A Case Study of the Slum Networking Project in Ahmedabad, India

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the role in which women's organizations, recognizing the gender-ascribed position of poor women in their household and community, play in reflecting their interests in community organizing. The case study focuses on poor women's participation in the joint activity of two women's organizations, the Gujarat Mahila Housing SEWA Trust (MHT) and the Foundation for Public Interest (FPI), in a government-led slum upgrading scheme: the Slum Networking Project (SNP) in Ahmedabad, India. The data for describing and analysing the case are based on my research and interviews undertaken in four slums from October to November 1997. The main topics to be discussed are as follows: 1) the organizational basis of the MHT and FPI, and their roles in the SNP; 2) the degree to which these organizations have institutionalized women's participation in community-based organizations (CBOs) vis-a-vis men; 3) the extent to which they have contributed to transforming women's perceptions of the management of CBOs beyond the provision of housing infrastructure preliminary aimed at the SNP.

The research findings show that in the areas where the MHT and FPI programmes were implemented to involve several female leaders, many women tended to see that they were more capable of organizing and managing their CBOs. On the other hand, in the areas where the programmes were not implemented, very few women tended to see that they were more capable than men because of their gender-ascribed nature such as their illiteracy and productive/reproductive roles that most of them are expected to perform. Throughout the analysis of the case, it can be concluded that women's organizations and the leaders operating their activities on the basis of the social relations of poor women, both at household and community level, are the key intermediaries in representing poor women's interests in policy agenda.