Madhya Pradesh Experience : Gender

Considerable progress has been made in raising awareness of the gender issue at the grassroots level in Madhya Pradesh. Workshops have been a major part in this process, and the participation of a variety of cadres has helped empower women in many areas.

The district-level workshop held at Gwalior in June 1996 was the first one. The workshop, attended by women panchayat members, aimed at listing out area-specific problems of women in the spheres of both general health and leprosy. This was followed by a workshop at Durg, which focused, among other things, on the health facilities available to rural women and the social problems encountered by them. It was attended by women panchayat representatives, Mahila Mandal members, lady medical officers and female literacy volunteers.

Encouraged by the success of this workshop, DANLEP followed up with 8 block-level workshops in Durg, involving about 740 women. In 1997-98, 4 more similar workships were held (Navsingpur, Sujalpur, Mandla and Bhopal).

The most important characteristic of these workshops was that they brought together large numbers of women, rural and urban alike, from different walks of life. These women were enabled to talk openly about their living conditions and health status, and even attempted to formulate possible remedial measures. More specifically, the workshops succeeded in involving many of these women in leprosy work in their villages. Gender issues were taken up thorough specific IEC inputs as well.

One of the positive trends in Madhya Pradesh has been the involvement of various cadres from different programmes and agencies. In Mandla, DANLEP's efforts are supported by the Integrated Child Development Scheme, which undertook to provide funds for the organisation of meetings at the village and block levels, following a jointly organised workship on Gender and Health in 1998. Block Extension Educators and Nehru Yuvak Kendra volunteers have also been mobilized for the effort in Mondla.

An important role is being played by the Mahila Samakhyas (women's groups). In Rajgarh district, 12 Samakhya activists succeeded in empowering 120 Mahila Sanghas (women's groups) to examine all women in their villages for skin lesions and report to NLEP. Multi-purpose workers have been involved in door-to-door surveys for case detection, and the support of young journalists and district training centres has been enlisted in certain areas.

DANLEP was able to mobilize about 30,000 women volunteers to become members of the MLEC search teams in 1998, which says a lot about the progress on the gender front in the state.