Recasting Citizenship for Development - File UPI

Transgressing Political Spaces and Claiming Citizenship 67
Parishad, as well as interviews with its leaders and staff of the facilitating
organisation, Vasundhara.
WOMEN’S PRESENCE, REPRESENTATION AND
INFLUENCE IN THE PARISHAD
As already mentioned, in the initial years the Parishad leaders were not
particularly interested in having women on board. This is not surprising,
considering that women are generally absent from management arrangements
pertaining to forest protection at the community level. This has
been the case with other community-based endeavours as well and reflects
the existing social power relations, especially gender relations within communities,
which makes the effective participation of women and also that
of Dalits and adivasis difficult.
Records of eight meetings were available for 1997, the initial year of
the Parishad’s existence. No woman was present at any of these meetings.
Women were also conspicuously absent from the initial meetings when
the decision to form the Parishad was taken. Gradually, from 1998 one or
two women started attending the working body meetings of the Parishad.
Among the earlier participants were women who were either brought
in by male relatives or were from higher castes. Once the space for women
was opened up, however, this soon changed with tribal and Dalit women
participating in greater numbers. The space for women’s participation was
created by instituting a sub-group within the Parishad, an informal body
that consists of women and meets every month. This group was called
the Central Women’s Committee, but women refer to these meetings as
‘mahila (women’s) meetings’ or as ‘Athraha tarikh meetings’, that is,
meetings held on the 18th of every month.
The Vasundhara staff felt that the lack of women’s presence in the
Parishad was a cause for concern. Vasundhara was committed to bringing
in women, and to promoting their active involvement in forest management
and decision-making. At the same time, they did not want women’s
participation to be an external imposition, and were committed to gradual
but steady progress in this direction. As a first step, the organisation committed
to having more women on the staff and as part of the facilitating
team at Ranpur. One senior woman staff member, as well as a woman