Throughout India, there are several instances of women leaders at the margins- affecting change and driving leadership in critical policy and governance areas in their local communities. These are the Grassroots Women Leaders, who play a crucial role in mobilising communities and drawing attention to policy issues that may have structurally been ignored. The SPRF Grassroots Women’s Tracker outlines a collection of such women, who have driven crucial policy changes from the bottom, in sectors such as education, local governance, sanitation, labour, livelihoods and justice.
The Grassroots Women Leaders project with the YIF fellows from Ashoka University aimed at exploring the challenges and experiences of such leaders, through semi-structured interviews and FGDs. The project outlined the basis and context against which such leaders emerge, the policy vacuum they try to address, and the specific challenges that emerge as they take on various leadership roles at the grassroots level. The study underscores the need to share and learn from these stories, for civil society and policymakers, as these leaders are often the first responders to gendered issues that affect the community, and are often ignored due to patriarchal structures and policy- blindness.
The project was conducted over a year, with mentorship and guidance from Yashoroop Dey, Research Lead and Anusha Arif, Research Associate at SPRF. SPRF worked with the fellows to identify existing literature, prepare questionnaires and discuss results and findings. The culmination is a report that outlines the experiences and challenges of women’s grassroots leadership in the country, and recommends for future inclusion in policy making discussion.
