Accessing resources

1. Accessing resources • Enabling environment: • policy support (groups of women organised and given rights to quarries) • Capacity gaps recognised: organisational training and skill gaps filled through literacy programme; and groups organised into federations • Social and political backlash from quarry contractors (linked to political parties), upper castes and men. • Two thirds of women’s groups collapsed – were denied access to transportation (trucks controlled by contractors); threatened with violence; enforcing caste norms made meetings difficult. • Despite policy support, points to key role of social & power analysis/relations across different institutional levels: household, community, markets, state

2. Key principles in gendering research • Disaggregation of data: Recognising the differences amongst women and men by age, stage in the life-cycle, class, ethnicity etc • Recognising the contribution of both productive and reproductive activities to household livelihoods (to avoid excessive time burdens) • Institutional analysis central to understanding sustainability, scalability and distributional effects: • Focus on decision-making and agency at different levels. • Not static, but change over time in response to both internal and external contextual shifts. • Interlinked, hence shift in one has implications for roles, status and identity across others.

3. Capacity-building • Short, tailor-made courses in: • Gender analysis and mainstreaming • Participatory action research • Research and critical analysis: • M. Res in Development Practice (through distance learning) • Research training through PhD programme – possibilities for joint supervision