Pushing the Boundaries: Understanding Women’s Political Participation and Empowerment

1. Pushing the Boundaries: Understanding Women’s Political Participation and Empowerment

2. Origins of the research • Social Mapping • River of life • Voice diaries • Photovoice • Limited evidence • Women’s voice • absent • Focus on formal • political participation

3. Research Objectives • Map and understand spaces where women participate in decision-making spaces in their communities and how they participate • Explore thebarriers and enabling factors for women’s participation. • Learn from good practice and from the challenges we and the women we work with encounter. • Analyse the effects of participation in these spaces on individual women’s lives and their communities

4. Participatory Research Methodology • Work through • partners, engage • staff • Observation • Social Mapping • River of life • Voice diaries • Photovoice

6. Women’s empowerment and participation • there is much talk of empowerment of women and girls and a lot of funding for these, but often empowerment is poorly defined or conceptualised, highly instrumentalised and what enables women to become empowered is very unclear • This research showed that empowerment is very different in different political, cultural and geographical contexts and within communities women’s empowerment journeys are very different depending on laws, national policy context, culture, education, exposure.

7. Empowerment continued: • Working seriously on women’s empowerment has to be long term, highly participatory and responsive, and context specific and there are no quick fixes or one size fits all. • Participation in and of itself can be empowering and bring change into women’s lives. • Empowerment involves challenging the existing power relations and structures that are rooted in gender inequality. It is not technical orsimply about training women/girls to get more engaged but working on power differentials from household to state level

8. Women’s empowerment journey • From the home to the community • Emerging leadership • From leadership to lobbying • Mobilising other women

9. To support women on their journey • Understanding communities, societies and the spaces where decisions are made, who controls them and how to enter them are critical issues • It is essential to explore where the core barriers lie, what opportunities there are and what enables women to leave their homes and get engaged at village level and beyond. • In some contexts just leaving home will be critical and empowering, in others getting elected to posts and speaking out will be possible. Much is circumscribed by the power relations between citizens and the state as well as between women and men. Seeing what will enable women to increase their political participation at all levels leads to more appropriate work

10. Enablers that were identified • The research showed that • countries with devolved power structures are more open to women’s participation • national laws on gender equality and rights and quotas support participation in new spaces • women only spaces are critical for providing support for women’s self confidence • raising women’s access to knowledge of their rights is especially valued, so too is access to income

11. Enablers continued • Working with men who control key decision making spaces to help them to listen to and hear women’s needs and perspectives and to allow women access is also critical in many contexts

12. “I was listening to one of the women talk about her husband denying her permission to participate and how she would get so upset she would be crying on her bed and her young daughter would comfort her. I realised that this is how I was with my wife, I didn’t like her to visit her family and I was just like this woman’s husband. I knew I had to change things in my own life” Partner staff reflection, Nicaragua

13. Barriers were many!! • They include: • Women’s triple burden and the time spent on care work • Women’s lack of economic independence to fund transports, clothes etc • Male opposition- this is not women’s place; male power to control women’s choices, mobility, finances…. • Lack of self confidence and belief, lack of rights awareness • Distance, language and much more….

14. Barriers & Enablers • “I get up at 3 o clock in the morning. I start the day by cleaning the oven (pasting it with cow dung mixed with water) and light the fire to heat the water for bathing. Then I clean the outer courtyard, then the rooms. Then I go to fetch water and take a bath. Then again I go to fetch water for cooking and start cooking. After I finish cooking I clean the cowshed. Then we eat. After eating I go to the field to work. During agricultural season it is weeding, transplanting, harvesting etc. Or else I go to the hills to collect fuel wood. If I go to the hills to collect fuel wood I return by 3 o clock. Or if I go to work in the field I return by 5 o clock. After returning I again go to fetch water. Then I start cooking again. Once cooking is done I serve food to my children and husband. Then I eat. Then I make the bed for everyone and we go to bed. Again I get up the next morning at 3 o clock.” Participant in India

15. Barriers & Enablers • “I love it when we discuss, debate and talk about our rights as women. This is how we have learnt our rights as women. It is better now for women; if we see that our partner is treating us badly, we have the right to leave them, because our life has value. We don’t have to continue living a life of abuse, we don’t have to continue being victims to our neighbours, or anyone anymore, because we are women and we have value….I tell my sons that all the rights they have, equally their wives have the same rights, to take decisions, as they are not the rulers of their wives.” • Participant in Nicaragua

16. Barriers & Enablers • “The biggest thing that I had to improve in myself was being able to speak in public. I was fearful of speaking in front of…mainly men who had a higher intellectual level than me: why? I felt a complex about my inferior education as a woman. This improved as I took on responsibilities in different grassroots organisations and especially because of the training by CDJP Matadi [an NGO] on civil and political rights of women, and women’s leadership.” • Participant in DRC

17. Programme Implications • Work at individual, household and community level, as well as tackling policy, institutions and governance structures. • Understand the context – conduct a thorough gender power analysis. • Listen to women, work with and alongside them – understand the boundaries of power that shape their lives. • Recognise the time needed to engage, build confidence and enable women to ‘speak out’. Slow and often small steps necessary • Include all women, by providing practical support to enable their participation.

18. Current paradigms for funding, planning and measuring success • One challenge is that current funding paradigms do not really support these kinds of approaches. How can INGOs tackle this reality? • Do staff now have the time and skills needed for working alongside partners, women and communities?