Gender and Citizenship at the Grassroots: Assessing the Effect of NGO Initiatives in Social Mobilization and Political Empowerment in Kenya and Bangladesh

"Can women's participation in associations and civil society initiatives reduce gender inequality?"

This study assesses the extent to which social mobilisation and political empowerment initiatives led by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have influenced gender dynamics in Kenya and Bangladesh. It focuses on the role of agency in the construction of citizenship: micro-level day-to-day expressions of citizenship and related gender dynamics, and the influence of NGO-led social mobilisation and political empowerment initiatives in cultivating agency.

Both sets of data are based on surveys. The Bangladesh survey covered 600 respondents linked to the initiatives of two organisations: Samata and Nijera Kori. The Kenya data covers 500 respondents, who are split into two categories of 250 each: those who have participated in NGO initiatives for social mobilisation/political empowerment (participants) and those who have not (non-participants).

In short, the study found that women who had participated in social mobilisation and political empowerment initiatives displayed more active citizenship than women who had not. However, comparison with their male counterparts highlighted significant gains in some areas and persistent male advantage in others:

• Significant gains have been made with respect to voter registration and voting, but not with respect to exercising leadership in political parties and taking part in election campaigning.
• With respect to participation in community public life, more women are serving on committees that manage community amenities and are decision-makers in community-based dispute resolution mechanisms.
• The gender gap persists with respect to opportunity to serve on public committees that depend on appointment by politicians or senior government officials.
• More men still engage with public officials and use institutional spaces, although the gap is reduced with participation in social mobilisation and political empowerment initiatives.
• In informal community life, female participants of social mobilisation initiatives facilitate other community members' engagement with, and access to services from, government officials and institutions.
• Such women also take up leadership roles in religious and kin-based institutions, ordinarily viewed as the preserve of male private power.

In conclusion, the report found that the intervention of civil associations does build and facilitate agency, which is crucial in overcoming social disadvantage. However, structural constraints can prove difficult to surmount:

• Civil society initiatives alone are not sufficient to erode the power of male networks that control public political space at the grassroots level, particularly in Bangladesh.
• There is further work to be done in directly challenging networks of exclusion, as well as deepening social legitimacy for women's exercise of voice and authority.
• Facilitation of agency must be combined with institutional reform in order to confront and remove the structural barriers that make it possible for opaque networks of the socially advantaged to thrive and exclude.

"Taken together, the data discussed in this article force us to step back and analyse the persistence of male social advantage in citizen political action at the grassroots level irrespective of country context. There is a clear signal that the intervention of civil associations does build and facilitate agency, which is crucial in overcoming social disadvantage. However, structural constraints can prove difficult to surmount in some areas. Facilitation of agency must therefore inevitably be combined with institutional reform in order to confront and remove the structural barriers that make it possible for opaque networks of the socially advantaged to thrive and exclude."