INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT FOR WOMEN

MOBILIZATION

1
6.1. Concepts of Social Mobilization and Women
Social Mobilization may be defined as “the process of
enabling the poor, marginalized and disenfranchised segments
of society to build and manage their own organizations and
thereby participate in decisions affecting their day-to-day lives
through the use of their own creativity”.
 Social Mobilization can also be defined as “a process of
engaging a large number of people in joint action for
achieving societal goals through self-reliant efforts.

Its immediate expected outcomes are the mobilization of all

possible resources and the sustained adoption/utilization of
appropriate policies, technologies or services through the
modification of attitudes and behavior of various social
2
actors”.
 ........Cont’d
Social Mobilization “is a process of organizing the target
groups to take initiatives and assert themselves”.
It seeks to make people more aware of the resources available
to them, to raise their consciousness and to give them the
motivation to undertake development activities for their own
betterment in the long run social mobilization aims at
empowering people to demand and generate the satisfaction of
their needs.

 Social mobilization is an approach and tool that enables

people to organize for collective action, by pooling resources
and building solidarity required to resolved common problems
3
and work towards community advancement .
 ........Cont’d
It is a process that empowers women and men to organize
their own democratically self-governing groups or community
organizations which enable them to initiate and control their
own personal and communal development, as opposed to
mere participation in an initiative designed by the government
or an external organization.

Mobilization is a transformational approach which empowers

marginalized communities to challenge dominance and create
changes in their lived situations.

4
 ........Cont’d
 Social mobilization is about empowering the poor based on three vital
parameters of power namely,
a) Their own capital,
b) Their own knowledge, and
c) Their own organizations.
 The idea of empowerment is based on the assumption that there are
three fundamental sources of power, that is:
 Capital is power and for self-reliance, the habit of saving must be
included
 Knowledge is power; no development can be sustained without the
process being grounded in one’s own knowledge base, culture and
skills.
 Organization is power for participation to be effective and dynamic;

5
the groups must respect the principle of social, economic and cultural
homogeneity.
 ........Cont’d
Social Mobilization is the process of dialogue, negotiation and
consensus building for action by people, communities, and
organizations etc. to identify, address and solve a common
problem.
It can be an effective strategy to create the kind of supportive
environment necessary to create sustained behavioral change
that will bring about community participation for sustainability
and self-reliance.
To achieve this, the strategy mush reach from the highest
levels of societal power to the hardest to reach and the most
disempowered families and community.

6
 ........Cont’d
Each mobilization is derived from a thorough probing and
understanding of felt needs in due order of priority.
The interactive nature of the process results in a progressive
deepening of the understanding of their problems and how
they can be collectively addressed.
Through a process of reflection-action-reflection, the spirals of
activities move simultaneously on both the material front as
well as on the mind.
The important aspect of social mobilization is that the minds of
the people are affected, consciousness is raised and creativity
is realized while at the same time immediate material benefits
are enjoyed by the prime actors.
7
 ........Cont’d
Social Mobilization is the process of pooling together,
harnessing, actualizing and utilizing potential human resources
for the purpose of development.
It is a process whereby human beings are made aware of the
resources at their disposal, and are also motivated and energized
to collectively utilize such resources for the improvement of their
spiritual and material conditions of living.
 Empowerment of poor, particularly women, and social
mobilization are the possible process for eradicating poverty.
Poverty can be effectively eradicated only when the poor start
contributing to the growth process through their active
involvement.
Voluntary organization, community based self-help groups and
8
local governmental organizations have a substantial role to play.
 ........Cont’d
 The experiences across different countries have shown that group
formation and development are not a spontaneous processes.
 A facilitator working closely with the communities at grassroots level
can play a critical role in the group formation and development.
 The quality of the groups can be influenced by the capacity of the
facilitator.
 The facilitator may or may not be an official. In some cases, NGOs can
not only work as facilitators but also help in Social Mobilization,
Training, and capacity building of facilitators being used.
 Women need to be viewed not as beneficiaries but a active participants
in the process of development and change.
 Empowerment of women can be effectively achieved if poor women
could be organized into groups – for community participation as well as
for assertion of their rights in various services related to their economic
9 and social well being.
Women’s empowerment is not only in financial terms but also
in attitudinal and motivational factors.
 There is no need for much inventions and innovation to
empower rural women and what needed is reorientation,
mobilization and realization of women friendly environment in
the rural areas.
Empowerment is the process of building capacities of creating
an atmosphere, which enables people to fully utilize their
creative potential in pursuance of quality of life.
Empowerment gives women the capacity to influence decision-
making process, planning, implementation and evaluation.
10
 It also deepens and popularizes the democratic process.
6 6.2. The Role of Government
Different actors play their own roles in women’s mobilization.
Among these, various government and non-government
organizations can be considered as the major ones.
Particularly the government plays an important role in creating
conducive institutional and political environment for women
mobilization.
These will enable women themselves to organize and mobilize
themselves and contribute their own share to the development
process.
If this is so other NGOs and other women activist groups can
fulfill their missions of empowering and mobilizing women
from their marginalization within societies.
11
6 6.2. The Role of Government
The state portrays itself as a neutral actor committed to
creating equality in the society. By conferring citizenship on its
populace, it promises to treat them as equal.
Recognizing that people are placed in unequal relationships, it
enacts legislation to equalize the social relationships.
Through affirmative action, it tries to create conditions for
excluded groups to take part in political decision-making.
Acknowledging that capacities and resources are unequally
distributed across various sections, it also promotes equality of
opportunities through special provisions regarding education
and employment so that people can compete as equals.
12
6 6.2. The Role of Government
According to experiences gained from different countries,
centralized policy and planning procedures strengthen the
hands of the state while weakening the participation of
marginalized groups and women.

The state-citizen relationship, which the state shaped according

to its own convenience, has left marginalized groups as mere
recipients of state-given patronage, a grossly inadequate
response to their needs.

To reshape this relationship, the policy environments and

institutions should designed in a way it favors the citizens
13
6 6.3. The Role of NGO’s
There are various roles of NGOs in the grassroots women's
mobilization.
The first role that NGOs have is to help build grassroots
women's movements where they don't exist.
They have to be catalysts in creating spaces for poor women to
gather, mobilize, and organize.
Their first priority of NGOs should be to catalyse and enable
the formation of grassroots women's organizations. We cannot
speak of a "women's movement" without this kind of
grassroots base.

14
6 ........Cont’d
The second critical role NGOs have to play is supporting
grassroots organizations, linking them together and helping
transform.

They must also support women's groups to develop critical

social change and action agendas. It is important that they do
not impose agendas but provide information, analysis, and
alternative viewpoints about issues.

15
6 ........Cont’d
The third role is to step back and support the mobilization and
its leadership in multiple ways. One such way is by opening up
advocacy spaces – instead of occupying the advocacy spaces
themselves, which is what they tend to do now.
They should encourage movements to use things like research,
data collection, and the creation of alternative analyses, as well
as to promote changes in the patterns of engagement and
negotiation with state authorities so that this relationship is not
always one of confrontation or supplication, but it can move
towards partnership and negotiation.

16
6 ........Cont’d
The fourth important role that NGOs can play is to enable
grassroots women's movements to form alliances and
partnerships with a range of other movements and other civil
society actors, in order to change the agendas and perspectives
of these other movements.
If women have a formidable mass base they can't be ignored.
But today women are not seen, in many parts of the world, as
any kind of political force or as a mass base.
This is partly because NGOs have been content to treat them as
beneficiaries of various kinds of economic development
programs.

17
6 ........Cont’d
They are content to organize them into extremely successful
savings and credit groups, for example, or into extremely
successful microenterprise programs.

A fifth role - NGOs have to constantly re-examine their role

and relationship vis-a-vis grassroots women's organizations
and later when they become well organized.

18
19
 D!
E N
HE
T
20