Leaders, not clients: grassroots women's groups transforming social protection
Editor(s)
Sweetman, CarolinePublication date
2011-07-01Subject
Gender
Metadata
Show full item recordJournal
Gender & DevelopmentDocument type
Journal articleDescription
Grassroots women in poor communities are creating their own innovative social protection mechanisms, and often moving beyond this to foster economic growth and prosperity. In this article, we propose an expansion of common understandings of social protection to include these activities initiated by citizens themselves. In this article, we describe strategies being led by grassroots women's community-based organisations in Kenya, Brazil and Peru, where women's self-help groups, networks, federations, and supporting NGOs, have been leading and organising livelihoods, health and food security initiatives for the benefit of their members and communities. Many of the objectives of social protection can best be met by creating a social protection framework that recognises and builds on grassroots women's own initiatives. This would reposition poor women in the social protection debate: recasting them from ‘beneficiaries’, to become active agents of change, and formal partners with government and development agencies. This article is hosted by our co-publisher Taylor & Francis. For the full table of contents for this and previous issues of this journal, please visit the <a href="http://www.genderanddevelopment.org">Gender and Development</a> website.Pages
12ISSN
1355-2074EISSN
1364-9221ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1080/13552074.2011.592634