A woman from India says, "It is important to help women discover their value and potential as human beings, children of God."

"Why marry if my development will stop because my husband says, `I'm head, sit down'?" --Zambian woman

Our trips confirmed that the relationships between men and women and the needs of both must be taken into account in all aspects of program planning and community building, regardless of whether involvements focus on one gender or the other, or the community as a whole. We also learned that if MCC's mission is to serve the needy and the vulnerable, then in many contexts women should be an important emphasis of our programs. This emphasis on women, though, must be an integral part of an overall strategy to enhance the abilities of women and men to work as full partners in meeting the needs of their society.

We heard in El Salvador, Zambia and India that women are among the most needy and vulnerable in many of the communities in which we serve according to any number of indices--income levels, access to education and health, literacy levels, vulnerability to violence, etc. Among the most crippling of problems besetting women in all three countries is their lack of confidence and low self-esteem. This is attributed to the pervasive lack of respect women experience for their skills, contributions, and needs, sometimes their very being.

Low self-esteem, lack of confidence, and social norms which dictate that men make the decisions and women submit make it difficult for women to participate effectively in mixed groups of men and women, at least initially. According to the people we met with in all three countries but most clearly articulated in India, women therefore need to be able to meet separately, to have a safe space within which to recognize their shared experiences, build confidence in an affirming and supportive context, work at identifying and assessing their needs as women, come up with solutions to identified problems, and develop skills with which to act on them. One of the church NGOs that we met with in El Salvador captures this eloquently in the title of its women's program, "Rebirth of the Displaced Women."

Other related reasons for working with women separately may include the fact that it is culturally required and that women have specific needs because of specific roles. Women also have specific reproductive health needs and issues, such as gynecological health, family planning, infertility, rape, female circumcision, sexually transmitted diseases, and the shame of AIDS. In addition, women are at very different levels from men in terms of access to and control of resources like land, education, information, income, and political clout. The power differential between men and women may be experienced in specific gendered ways--for example, violence, dowry issues, wage differentials, obstacles to inheriting and owning property, limited control over their bodies in terms of sexual relations and number of children they give birth to. Working with women separately may also be important because there are government programs that are available only to women's groups.

There is also a power differential between women which must be acknowledged and may affect which women can work together in groups. For example, in the Indian context and in many other contexts, a woman who marries takes up residence with her husband and his family and is expected to serve her mother-in-law as well as her new male relatives. All group work must be sensitive to existing power dynamics if it is to be an effective strategy toward empowerment.

We heard in all three contexts, however, that women lack experience in working together and taking collective action on behalf of women. They have limited opportunity and time. Permission from their male relatives is often required, and women may be reluctant to request it. And there is resistance to group action by women, who may distrust each other because of the way women are perceived, which influences the way they view themselves.

An interesting observation made in El Salvador and Zambia was that married women are among the most inhibited in terms of involvement in group activities. Though they garner more respect in the community than single, widowed or divorced women, they also feel more pressure to avoid becoming involved in activities that might be perceived to challenge the status quo or might negatively impact their husbands. They are expected to uphold social mores, community traditions, and religious teachings which define women's position in that society. In El Salvador we heard that husbands' permission is required before married women can attend leadership training programs in the church and they often face resistance afterwards: "You are not the same woman I married; the tiger in you is loose" (Carmelita Sisters). We also heard that during the war in El Salvador it was mainly single and widowed women who assumed leadership roles as church leaders and health promoters when space opened up for women because of men's fear of assassination. Married women only came to be involved in these positions later, after being involved in Bible studies which helped increase confidence and expand understandings of what women could do.

In Zambia, we heard that women who are outspoken about gender issues in Zambia are "probably divorced" (Meeting with couples from the Pilgrim Wesleyan Church). Once the bride price is paid in a Zambian marriage, a woman must give total respect to her husband and should not disgrace him in any way. This is reflected, for example, in the difference between the way married and single women conduct themselves in one of the theological colleges we visited. We were told that the latter are much more likely to speak and to voice their opinions. Married women tend to be silent or to agree with what their husbands say (TCCA). In our conversation with staff persons at the Christian Council of Zambia, we heard that single women are beginning to challenge traditional ideas of marriage and expressing reluctance to get married: "Why marry if my development will stop because my husband says, `I'm head, sit down'?" In fact, during our conversation about the roles women and men play in society and how these are changing, one male staff person informed us that he can participate in discussions like this at work with his female co-workers, but his wife would not be free to express such opinions at home. A research organization working on the status of women in Zambia documented this pattern; women who have achieved the most in Zambia tend to be single women. In our own experience, the women we met with who were most outspoken about women's subordinate role in the church were widowed.

One of MCC India's partner NGOs introduced us to women with whom they were working to organize and initiate change for the community through government services and community development. The women related difficult stories about the resistance they faced at first. They spoke of how upper caste people incited their husbands against them and about the domestic violence many of them experienced. The women became disheartened in the face of huge cultural barriers that dictated that women remain isolated in their homes, allowed to leave only for work in the fields or gathering water. The groups disbanded and the community became very divided. It was only after much encouragement and patient, careful work by the NGO that women were willing to come together again to discuss the problems they were experiencing, work out solutions, and mobilize themselves to take advantage of improved housing and water projects being sponsored by the government.

According to many we met with, a critical element in gaining the permission and continued support of family members for women to meet together is being able to show that any group activity will also benefit women's individual families and the community. NGOs we met with are often involved in helping women explain to their families and the community the value of their organizing to achieve certain objectives. Women, too, often need to be convinced of this. Most of the NGOs we met with consider this to be one of the most important tasks. They dedicate much time to helping women learn to value themselves as children of God with gifts and talents to be nurtured and put to use for the benefit of themselves and the community. This is the first step women must take in the long process to overcome oppression in their lives.

At a more practical level, to be of interest to women and worth their valuable time, the activities or projects being proposed must also be seen by them to target what they define as their basic needs. The starting point must be the experiences of the women themselves. According to many we met with, women will, in the context of trusting relationships and creative ways of engagement, identify their needs and provide solutions.

Throughout this process and as work is undertaken to address perceived inadequacies in general living conditions and lack of resources, it is important that women's empowerment be an integral and implicit objective. Empowerment for women, as we encountered it, means the power to help bring about an improved quality of life for themselves and their community and a power-within which includes self-acceptance and self-respect and extends to respect for and acceptance of men as partners in this process.

As women become more confident about their abilities and self-reliant through extended group work that seeks to raise self-esteem, develop skills, provide leadership training, encourage participatory styles of relating and decision-making, and raise awareness of women's situation and position in society, they are in a much stronger position to articulate their needs and expectations to other members of the community and to ensure that these needs are recognized and taken into account by the community. They can then participate as agents, not beneficiaries, in taking action to meet their specific needs and the needs of the community. As their credibility increases, they may be able to begin confronting issues of discrimination reflected in unfair treatment and violence.

The sorts of programs we saw include income-generation projects, savings programs, housing projects, water and sanitation projects, education and health programs, vocational and skills training, motivational and rights awareness programs which include topics such as legal rights, the potential and role of women in social change, and the larger social, political and economic structures which greatly influence women's individual experiences. Of these, economic empowerment programs for women are considered by many to be one of the most important in the overall strategy to improve the situation and position of women in society.

It should be pointed out that it may not always be possible to target women in a community specifically at the outset. Much will depend on the length and kind of relationship that exists with the community. Rural and urban areas may be different in this respect. For example in India, we met with a community development NGO that works in the rural area of Andhra Pradesh. Although working with women separately is an important element of SUCHI's community development approach, SUCHI also helps to organize and work with elders/men's groups and youth. There had to be the perception that different groups in the community would benefit from SUCHI's involvement before any emphasis on women could be made explicit. In the urban areas of Calcutta, apart from the resistance to women gathering in groups referred to earlier, NGOs with a mandate to "uplift the situation of women" (SPAN) or to "free women from exploitation" (NNPS) have experienced less difficulty in stating and pursuing these goals from the outset. In Zambia, the Christian Council of Zambia addresses empowerment issues for women within the context of structures that have already been set up for women, such as church groups or health clinics.

Some of the most encouraging projects we saw were in India. There may be many reasons for this, but among the most obvious was that most of the NGOs we met with there had made working with women their specific mandate or at least an important focus. They had also been in existence long enough to have helped birth some very positive results in terms of women organizing themselves, building self-esteem, making and saving money, and developing self-reliance. However, as we listened to the number of activities women were involved in and what they had achieved, we wondered whether in some contexts women have ended up shouldering much of the burden of community-building in addition to all their other responsibilities.

It is difficult to assess this. Women have kept their traditional roles, but have been allowed to add to them. It did not appear as though men's roles had changed much, though we did hear that in some communities men are beginning to participate in some of the community-building initiatives women have undertaken, or are making it possible for women to undertake them by helping out more around the home with childcare or cooking. Many of the women we talked to said they feel very encouraged by what they have achieved thus far--they are building confidence, identifying their needs and priorities and deciding what must be done to meet them, experiencing more freedom to leave the home during the day, gaining the respect of their husbands and in-laws, earning and saving money, building new houses, educating their children, becoming less dependent on the upper castes and their male relatives, speaking out in the presence of men and communicating their needs and their dreams, and feeling in more control of their future. Though the relationship of power between men and women does not seem to have been directly challenged or the roles of men and women in these communities fundamentally changed, nevertheless the women themselves say they feel they are very much in the process of empowering themselves.

These trips provided snapshot views of projects and communities, and although we heard a little of their history it is difficult and inappropriate to draw conclusions about them in terms of what they have or have not achieved. The important learning was that who benefits from a project and how is a complex issue and can only be assessed on a case-by-case basis, in the context of a relationship of some duration, in constant consultation with the participants and others in the community, and over time. We as MCC need to be ready to engage the community in discussion, but in the final analysis it is only the members of the community, and the different groups within it, that can decide which initiatives and strategies are appropriate for their situation and community.

Another important learning is that the empowerment of women by women is anything but a straightforward process. We heard that it is a continuous process that takes place over a long period of time, often at considerable risk to women who can remain very vulnerable to the resistance of men throughout much of the process. That is why it is also important to work with men.