Journal of Social Work Education and Practice (Jul 2016)
Women as Partners of Development
Abstract
Developing Partnership with the stakeholders and giving space for planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating the project for their own development is an ideal situation of participatory development. It is the popular as well as effective way of development and leads to sustainable progress. When this partnership involves strong participation from the part of women folk, the dynamism of the developmental changes takes in a drastic form. SPED III (sustainability through participation, empowerment and decentralization) is a five-year project funded by CIDA and implemented by Save A Family Plan Trust India through their 28 partner NGOs and in 520 villages across India. The methodology of the SPED III is based on the decentralized planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. In this process, women are taking important stand and new partnership brings about fundamental changes when it is analyzed from the point of view of stakeholders. The researcher analyses and seeks to find out the comprehensive, multilevel process by which the stakeholders or partners in the development especially women develop, leverage and manage the partnership. The researcher has taken five cases of exemplary changes occurred as part of a participatory development programme. Descriptive design using case study method is applied to do in depth analysis of the cases. The primary data has collected through interview schedule and FGD with shortlisted cases and secondary through sources such as case studies and annual and bi-annual reports of the CIDA programme. The researcher observed the development of perceived need into felt need where the people especially women get involved into the village issue and the spirit that takes them into transformative leadership and partners in development. It was also observed that the when women gets resources to overcome the binding chains, they came out of the culture of silence and they move far ahead in achieving the hierarchy of needs which consequently improves their quality of life at personal and community level. Partnership with women has substantially influenced the gender relations in the villages and power dynamics between male and female. Also partnership has given legitimacy of the role and positions of women in public sphere including social, economic and political realms.
