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Gender Training Institute Projects and Programs |
Women in Democracy Elected women politicians remain scarce across India at all levels of political involvement. While formal political equality was established in the Constitution of India (Articles 325, 326), women have yet to benefit from their right to equal participation. Thus, the Gender Training Institute (GTI) embarked on the two-year "Enhancing the Role of Women in Strengthening Democracy" project in order to build the capacities of marginalized women to participate in state and national electoral politics, catalyzing democracy and minimizing the gender deficit. Supported by the United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF), our nationwide activities included:
- Lobbying political parties to increase seats for women within parties,
- Lobbying for the passage of the Women's Reservation Bill,
- Creating a collective of 1,000 women leaders, ensuring proportional regional representation,
- Building the leadership capacities of these women to contest and win elections, and
- Ensuring participation of marginalized women belonging to Scheduled Castes and Tribes.
Selected key achievements from February 2008 to January 2010 involved:
- Partnering with regional educational and non-profit institutions
- Preliminary analysis and needs assessment studies: To gain a better understanding of the current situation of women in politics, we collected twenty-four case studies from elected female representatives and women political activists across India. Our training needs assessment was based on structured interviews with 100 women.
- Development of training modules: We developed in-person trainings designed to cover the following topics, among others:
- India's political system
- Gender and politics
- Election procedures
- Political parties
- Campaigning
- Leadership qualities
- Communication skills
- Resource mobilization
- Engaging the media
Our online training course, designed for a wider distribution of knowledge and skills, covers the following topics:
- Political concepts
- Citizenship and gender
- Leadership and vision
- Historical knowledge
- Challenges to governance
- Capacity-building trainings for 1,000 women: To initiate our in-person trainings, 108 trainers from partner institutions across India attended workshops on the upcoming trainings' contents, session plans, region-specific concerns and conduct. From March through November 2009, one thousand women participated in 30 capacity building trainings aimed at enhancing the skills of current and aspiring women leaders as community representatives and electoral contestants. Participants ranged from ward councilors and ex-MLAs to potential Parliament candidates, while resource persons and guest trainers included members of Parliament, mayors, representatives from the National Commission for Women and heads of women's wings of political parties.
- National and regional advocacy and networking initiatives: Together with our partner organization Women Power Connect (WPC), we organized meetings, workshops, charters of demands, media appearances, press releases, consultations with Parliamentarians and online awareness raising campaigns. Our South Asia workshop in December 2009 established a network of women leaders acros the region, with participants hailing from Nepal, Bangaldesh, Bhutan and Sri Lanka.
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