Grassroots Women's Organizations Research Articles

Grassroots Women Organising for Resilient Communities around the World

Grassroots women's organisations have, in their communities, long been organising livelihoods, assets, community space and agricultural knowledge. Their work demonstrates an ‘imagining’ of development different from mainstream development discourse, because it is bottom‐up, self‐help work. The women's ongoing strategies and new coping mechanisms serve as a foundation for community empowerment and resilience as they face the impacts of current crises. Leaders of grassroots women's community groups and NGOs that are connected through the global network of the Huairou Commission reviewed the impacts of the recent financial and food crises and of climate change on their communities. They revealed clear hardships as a result of the crises, but also questioned the emphasis on the crises, noting that donors and governments used the crises to cut funding and services. Participants instead emphasised a crisis in values and consumption patterns, where multinational corporations are tightening their grip on their lives.

Grassroots Women's Organizations' Fight for Freedom from Sexual Violence and Recognition under Domestic and International Law

The sun was beginning to set in Port-au-Prince as we approached the new KOFAVIV clinic and the open air living room let us hear the singing and clapping as we entered. Although we received a warm welcome, the stories that the women were about to share provided a harsh contrast to the pleasant scene we were presently a part of; stories of helping strangers, friends, and family members, who like them, are victims of sexual violence, displacement, and uncertainty. The Haiti Project at the International Women's Human Rights Clinic (IWHR) at CUNY School of Law left for Port-au-Prince, Haiti on October 7, 2010. Our goal was to collect firsthand evidence of the conditions in the displacement camps. We were able to speak with three groups of people to broaden our understanding and to seek out the disconnect between what was happening on the ground and the official responses to these issues. We spoke to residents in the camps, the service providers operating in the camp, and government agencies. This information was then compiled and included in our petition for precautionary measures to be filed with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The women that we met from KOFAVIV spoke about the work they do in the camps, assisting victims and identifying rapists. If a woman becomes the victim of an attack, she is put in touch with a KOFAVIV member who then accompanies the victim to the camp committee or police, to the hospital to obtain a medical certificate,

Leaders, not clients: grassroots women's groups transforming social protection

Grassroots women in poor communities are creating their own innovative social protection mechanisms, and often moving beyond this to foster economic growth and prosperity. In this article, we propose an expansion of common understandings of social protection to include these activities initiated by citizens themselves. In this article, we describe strategies being led by grassroots women's community-based organisations in Kenya, Brazil and Peru, where women's self-help groups, networks, federations, and supporting NGOs, have been leading and organising livelihoods, health and food security initiatives for the benefit of their members and communities. Many of the objectives of social protection can best be met by creating a social protection framework that recognises and builds on grassroots women's own initiatives. This would reposition poor women in the social protection debate: recasting them from ‘beneficiaries’, to become active agents of change, and formal partners with government and development agencies.

Integrating Women's Human Rights into Global Health Research: An Action Framework

This article uses Scale of Change theory as a framework to guide global health researchers to synergistically target women's health outcomes in the context of improving their right to freedom, equity, and equality of opportunities. We hypothesize that health researchers can do so through six action strategies. These strategies include (1) becoming fully informed of women's human rights directives to integrate them into research, (2) mainstreaming gender in the research, (3) using the expertise of grass roots women's organizations in the setting, (4) showcasing women's equity and equality in the organizational infrastructure, (5) disseminating research findings to policymakers in the study locale to influence health priorities, and (6) publicizing the social conditions that are linked to women's diseases. We explore conceptual and logistical dilemmas in transforming a study using these principles and also provide a case study of obstetric fistula reduction in Nigeria to illustrate how these strategies can be operationalized. Our intent is to offer a feasible approach to health researchers who, conceptually, may link women's health to social and cultural conditions but are looking for practical implementation strategies to examine a women's health issue through the lens of their human rights.

Grassroots women's leadership and ‘deepening democracy’: the Huairou Commission's Local to Local Dialogue replication

Grassroots women's leadership is important if democracy is to be ‘deepened’ – that is, if representative democracies are to formally include citizen participation in more ways than simply voting in elections. One approach to deepening democracy is to encourage and support spaces – both literal and metaphorical – that enable grassroots women to organise as leaders and engage with local government to achieve change in their communities. This, it is hoped, will enable women to develop ongoing relationships with local government and achieve concrete improvements for their communities. The Huairou Commission and GROOTS International have developed an approach which helps grassroots women's organisations to do this. This article examines how grassroots women's organisations in Uganda, Kenya, and Russia have successfully adapted the Local to Local Dialogue method to their local contexts, empowering and recognising poor women as community leaders.

Development Section, April 2008

Development Section, April 2008

Re‐Visiting Peruvian Grassroots Women's Organisations: Where Are They Now?

AbstractWhile women's organising in Latin America was the subject of significant academic attention throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, there has been little more recent discussion of the ongoing role of low income women in urban community development. This article therefore re‐visits women's long‐term voluntary work in order to explore how their endeavours have been conceptualised over time, tracing the trajectory of women's popular organising in Peru. The discussion begins with understandings of women's popular organising as part of an ‘alternative development’ paradigm, before exploring more recent mainstream considerations of women's organisations as a source of social capital. This overview is complemented by a recent case study of a group of women health promoters in Lima, which emphasises the continued resilience and dedication of grassroots women activists, despite their recent low profile in the international development arena.

The Gendered Politics of Woman-work

This article explores discursive tensions in Party organizations prior to and after the founding of the People's Republic of China. Specifically, it explains radicalism among grassroots women leaders during the Great Leap Forward. The author argues that some of these leaders neglected the health of women and children and even sought to dismantle grassroots women's organizations because of how they were recruited and trained in grassroots Party organizations. Whereas the Chinese Communist Party and the All China Women's Federation (ACWF) leadership sought to implement a Marxist maternalist conception of sexual equality that stressed physiological difference, grass-roots Party organizations operated on the basis of a revolutionary Maoist ethic according to which all were expected to struggle equally. Trained by local Party organizations, a number of rural women leaders identified with interpretations of sexual equality put forth by the local Party, not by the Party and ACWF leadership, and consequently transformed important aspects of woman-work during the late 1950s.

Acts of resistance: the performance of women's grassroots protest in Peru

Creative approaches such as theatre are rarely addressed in analytic terms in the arena of grassroots political protest. In this article, is is argued that theatre can be an effective medium through which to engage with social change, and that theatrical protest articulates in a variety of intricate ways to achieve this. Two cases of political protest events which use theatre are examined, both performed by Peruvian grassroots women's organisations and set against a backdrop of the volatile period leading up to President Fujimori's dismissal in 2000. In a context of state authoritarianism, poverty and gendered inequality, four key aspects of the practice of performance contribute to political resistance. Firstly, the symbolic potency of making one's voice heard in public as an actively participating citizen promotes a process of ‘democratic discourse.’ Secondly, the reversals and inversions of public space and authority figures challenge established discourses of power relations. Thirdly, theatre as a ‘positive’ form of dissent provides a celebratory contrast to the ‘violence’ of traditional forms of protest. Finally, theatre contributes a space for ‘bearing witness’ to state oppression or corruption. This article demonstrates that in these crucial ways, theatrical grassroots protest is a potent tool through which marginalized sectors of civil society can engage in creative political dissent.

Russian Women and Their Organizations: Gender, Discrimination, and Grassroots Women's Organizations, 1991-96. By Rebecca Kay. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. ix, 267 pp. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Tables. $69.95, hard bound.

Russian Women and Their Organizations: Gender, Discrimination, and Grassroots Women's Organizations, 1991-96. By Rebecca Kay. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. ix, 267 pp. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Tables. $69.95, hard bound.

Russian women and their organizations: gender, discrimination and grassroots women's organizations, 1991-96

Acknowledgements Introduction PART I: THE GENDER CLIMATE IN POST-SOVIET RUSSIA Soviet and Post-Soviet Gender Climates No Place for a Woman! Political Representation and Public Life Born to be Mothers? Motherhood as Every Woman's 'Natural Calling' Equals or Opposites? Women's Attitudes to Gender PART II: ORGANIZED RESPONSES AND WOMEN'S ACTIVISM Challenging Inequality: Legislative Approaches versus Women's Activism Grassroots Women's Organizations: Agents of Change or a Means of Survival? Public Faces: Recruitment Strategies, Public Actions and Use of the Media Sisterhood or Suspicion? Relations Between Russian Women's Organizations Pot of Gold or Poison Chalice? The Impact of Western Support Conclusions: Grassroots Women's Organizations and the Gender Climate Appendix A: The Organizations of the Sample Appendix B: The Women of the Sample Table B.1: Organization, Age, Marital Status, Children Table B.2: Education, Profession, Occupation Appendix C: Conferences, Seminars and Events Attended During Fieldwork Endnotes Bibliography Index

Negotiating international norms: The Inter-American Commission of Women and the Convention on Violence Against Women

Violence against women is a global phenomenon linked to patriarchal cultural values and social structures that subordinate women. In Latin America, grass roots women's organizations and the Inter-American Commission of Women have recently turned their attention to pressing the governments of the Americas to address the endemic problem of violence against women. The work of the Inter-American Commission of Women has been particularly important but widely ignored in this area. As a specialized commission of the Organization of American States, the Inter-American Commission of Women has long worked to improve the rights and status of women throughout the Americas and has recently succeeded in negotiating an important international convention, the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence Against Women. This convention breaks new ground by defining violence against women as a violation of women's human rights and by identifying the duties of states to address the problem. This article traces the historical and contemporary role of the Inter-American Commission of Women in negotiating international norms aimed at defining and securing women's rights in the Americas. It outlines the specific work the commission carried out in negotiating the Convention on Violence Against Women, which has been in force since 1995, and it examines the innovative international norms found in the convention. It shows that, despite problems of public obscurity and state resistances to change, the commission has pressed governments from the international level to address and improve women's rights. Combined with a growing women's movement at the grass roots level in the Americas, the governments of the region are now having to take real steps to combat violence against women.

THE CHALLENGES AND PROMISES OF CLASS AND RACIAL DIVERSITY IN THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT

This article demonstrates how class and racial dynamics generate different styles of activism among women's movement organizations. Based on a comparative study of two feminist organizations—one composed of lower-class women of color and another of upper-class white women—it charts the formation of divergent types of gender politics. First, it explores how differences in the class and racial backgrounds of the memberships create distinct organizational needs; second, how these divergent political interests motivate contrasting organizational ideologies, activities, and structures; and finally how they motivate different approaches to the wider women's movement. At the conclusion, implications are drawn for cross-class/race alliances among grassroots women's organizations.

The European Women's Lobby

The European Women's Lobby was formally set up at a meeting in Brussels on 21-22 September 1990. The aim of the Lobby is to establish a permanent representation for women at the level of the European Community (EC). Women are represented in the Lobby via delegates from nongovernmental women's organizations, or co-ordinations of women's organizations, which are operating at either the European or the national level. The existence of the Lobby, the form it takes and its potential for action, raises crucial questions about the involvement of women in mainstream political activity and the ways in which women's diverse interests can be represented. The idea of a European Women's Lobby was first mooted in the early 1980s, with the already existing EC Youth Forum being cited as an example. Initial soundings foundered on the hostility and/or distance between 'traditional' and 'feminist' women in most countries, and on the lack of interest of the latter in either the EC or mainstream politics.1 During the 1980s, however, both the hostility and the distance lessened, with traditional women's organizations becoming somewhat more radical, and more feminists seeing the need to 'enter the mainstream'. Indicative of this latter trend was the growth of the European Network of Women which tried to make links between grassroots women's organizations and to campaign at the European level.

Self-Defense for Women: Translating Theory into Practice

As rates of violent crime have risen, grassroots women's organizations, hospitals, and other community agencies have begun to respond to the needs of the victims of violent assault. Currently, many communities across the country have some type of service, such as rape assistance programs, for victims of violent crimes. Unfortunately, however, programs designed to prevent women from becoming the victims of sexual assault and other violent crimes have developed more slowly. In order to avoid being victimized, women have traditionally been encouraged to limit their mobility and to depend upon men, large barking dogs, burglar alarms, chemical sprays, and other external agents for protection. The rise of interest in selfdefense for women represents a significant shift in approach, both because self-defense programs are aimed at crime prevention and because they encourage women to be active participants in their own safety and defense. Although this new interest in self-defense is encouraging indeed, there is also some reason for concern. Many of the self-defense programs currently offered across the country do not adequately take into account the particular needs of women. It is common for self-defense courses to place most of their emphasis on physical skills, without demonstrating any real understanding of traditional female gender-role socialization and how this inhibits a woman from effectively acting in her own defense. It is not enough to teach women how to defend themselves. They must also be trained and motivated to overcome socialized tendencies toward passivity, helplessness, low self-esteem, and self-sacrifice.