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Citation: 28 Women's Rts. L. Rep. 25 2007

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PRESENTATION
Grassroots Women's Participation in
the Recovery Process
Ayse Yonder*
As Caroline Moser indicates, it is useful to
look at the experiences of groups working on
the ground to get a good understanding of how
to translate gender policy into practice. My
presentation is about how some grassroots wo-
men's groups from India and Turkey have or-
ganized after the earthquake to participate in
the recovery and reconstruction process. I will
first give some background information about
the two organizations, then describe the strate-
gies they used, and conclude with some of the
lessons learned.
Swayam Shikshan Prayog ("SSP") from In-
dia and the Foundation for the Support of Wo-
men's Work ("KEDV") from Turkey are both
nonprofit community-development organiza-
tions with over fifteen years of experience.
Both are members of GROOTS International
and the Huairou Commission, two international
networks of grassroots women's organizations.
The Huairou Commission is a partnership or-
ganization which was established in 1995 during
the United Nations Women's Summit in Beij-
ing, China. It works with grassroots women's
networks and their partners from academia,
media, governments, and international agen-
cies, who are dedicated to promoting grassroots
*Ayse Yonder is a professor at the Graduate Center for
Planning and the Environment ("GCPE") at Pratt Institute
and chaired the graduate programs in city planning and
environmental planning from 1991-2005 and 2001-2005. She
holds an architecture degree from Istanbul Technical
University, MCP from University of Pennsylvania, and Ph.D.
from University of California, Berkeley. She has
collaborated with the Pratt Center for Community
[Women's Rights Law Reporter, Volume 28, Number 1, Winter 2007]
© 2007 by Women's Rights Law Reporter, Rutgers-The State University
0085-8269/80/0908
women's agendas. GROOTS International is
the most active network within the Huairou
Commission. It supports peer learning and ex-
changes among grassroots women's groups
from about forty different countries. As
GROOTS members, SSP and KEDV have
taken the lead in the Huairou Commission's
disaster campaign.
The magnitude of disasters depends on
conditions of vulnerability, poverty, overcrowd-
ing, etc. Hurricane Katrina has highlighted that
racism, corruption, and incompetence may also
increase vulnerability. According to a 2005
World Bank Report, ninety-five percent of
deaths from disasters took place in developing
countries. The losses suffered as a percentage
of the domestic product were about twenty
times greater than those of industrial countries
in the North. The two countries I will talk
about are both located in hazard-prone regions.
The Marmara earthquake in Turkey lead to
about 18,000 deaths and 200,000 people were
left homeless. In India, the 1993 Maharashtra
earthquake that took place in a rural area killed
8,000 people and destroyed about the same
number of homes. The 2001 Gujarat earth-
quake took place in a more urbanized region of
Development on a number of projects, and is a member of
the Huairou Commission, an international coalition of
grassroots women's organizations involved in policy
advocacy. Her research and publications focus on
community development, informal land and housing
markets, and gender and disaster issues. She started working
on post-disaster planning issues after the 1999 Marmara
earthquake in Turkey.

India, like the Marmara earthquake. The num-
ber of deaths was much higher in Gujarat,
about 20,000, and 700,000 housing units were
destroyed.
SSP and KEDV were not disaster relief or-
ganizations. When they got involved in earth-
quake relief and recovery, they brought a long-
term community development perspective to
the process. Even though they worked in dif-
ferent cultural and institutional contexts, they
shared a participatory approach similar to other
GROOTS International members. This in-
cluded working as facilitators and resource
partners, rather than as service providers, to
support grassroots women's leadership, while
promoting women's confidence and self-reli-
ance. SSP and KEDV work with women on
their practical day-to-day needs, focusing on is-
sues of power, equality, and social justice. They
emphasize peer exchanges for women's groups
to learn from each other, share their exper-
iences, and grow. Also, they promote policy ad-
vocacy at the national and international levels
as members of GROOTS International and the
Huairou Commission.
SSP and KEDV quickly became aware of
the problems with disaster aid. The entitlement
programs target individuals and loss of prop-
erty, focusing on distributing food, clothing, and
rebuilding the infrastructure, but ignore peo-
ple's livelihood needs. SSP and KEDV noticed
that aid was turning people into passive victims
and beggars, and they saw the problems with
when and how disaster aid was delivered. Yet,
they also saw an opportunity for long-term de-
velopment and an opening to help women par-
ticipate in the reconstruction process. There
were resources flowing into the region; it was a
time of cooperation and traditionally excluded
groups had opportunities for involvement. I
should note that developing countries qualify
for aid from international agencies, for instance,
credits from the World Bank. Thus, money is
available, even though it adds to the country's
foreign debt and creates problems in the long
term.
SSP and KEDV worked in very different
contexts, which made a difference in how they
negotiated with the government to get women
involved in the reconstruction process, and on
the scale of organizing that could be achieved.
In India there were existing programs to in-
WOMEN'S RIGHTS LAW REPORTER [Vol. 28:25 2007]
crease women's participation in governance,
and community participation was a requirement
of the disaster aid programs in Maharashtra and
Gujarat. In Turkey there were no such pro-
grams, so they had to raise local and interna-
tional resources to support their work.
After the Maharashtra earthquake, the
government invited SSP as an advisor to make a
failing participatory reconstruction program
work. SSP used three strategies. The first strat-
egy was to revive the existing women's groups
(Mahila Milan) and negotiate with the state
government to hire them as information teams
in the reconstruction process. As a result, wo-
men became the paid intermediaries between
the government officials and the villagers. The
second strategy was to train government offi-
cials to work with women and with communi-
ties, because officials usually mistreated com-
munity members and women when they came
to ask for things. The third basic strategy was
to build the capacity of women to take over
these roles. The women motivated homeown-
ers, showed them how to do earthquake-safe
construction, monitored the reconstruction pro-
cess, and provided feedback to the government.
People could not believe that the government
was paying poor women to be representatives
of their villages, and at first women's groups
were met with a lot of resistance. To overcome
such obstacles, SSP recommended that the wo-
men work in groups, speak the truth at all
times, and participate actively in local govern-
ment meetings. Over time, women's groups ac-
quired the confidence and skills to take on a
range of roles.
By the end of the program, 250,000 house-
holds, including Gujarat, were involved in
earthquake-safe construction in Latur. Liveli-
hoods were stabilized through the creation of
new businesses. Women's groups also started
getting involved in a range of other issues in
their communities. They started working on
health, education, water, and sanitation issues
in their villages, and started building their own
community centers. These centers were critical
for women in Maharashtra to maintain their
presence in the village as active community
agents after the government program ended. In
Gujarat, a more conservative region, the cen-
ters played an important role in getting women
Yonder/GRASSROOTS WOMEN'S PARTICIPATION IN THE RECOVERY PROCESS
out of their homes to participate in the recon-
struction process.
In Turkey, KEDV also used three simple
strategies. Since there was no political space in
government programs for women, KEDV's first
strategy was to create community spaces for
women and their children. The first Women
and Children Centers ("Centers") were in tent
cities, and a transportation container served as
the child care room so women did not have to
worry about their children when they got to-
gether to organize. The Centers turned out to
serve a very important function for women who
lost their homes and networks, many of whom
had moved at least three times. First, they
moved from the rubble into tent cities where
they lived for several months under very diffi-
cult conditions. Then they moved into the iso-
lated temporary settlements where they lived
for another two to three years, again under dif-
ficult conditions. Finally, after two or three
years, they moved into permanent housing, but
it was only former homeowners who qualified
for permanent housing built by the government.
The tenants had no entitlements.
The Centers provided safe, communal liv-
ing rooms for women, and they also became
community information centers. The women
gathered information on disaster programs and
disseminated it to their communities. The Cen-
ters served as a base for various training and
support programs, as well as hosting local, na-
tional, and international meetings with peer
groups from other areas. The Centers became a
visible presence in the community and gave wo-
men a group identity. They helped women
maintain their networks even after they moved.
The second strategy KEDV used was ca-
pacity building. Women learned a wide range
of skills, including non-traditional skills like car-
pentry. The women working on the "dolls pro-
ject," a contract that KEDV helped the women
get from the Ministry of Tourism. Some of the
women had never worked before and most had
no experience working in groups. This was the
first time that they got involved in teamwork
and were able to utilize a division of labor,
quality control, and so on, earning decent
wages.
The third strategy was to facilitate dialogue
and negotiations between women and the gov-
ernment. Women went in groups to talk with
the local officials and some started serving on
committees. As one woman said, "[w]hen we
went to the government individually, the offi-
cials scolded us. When we went in groups of
five to six, the officials listened to us, but when
we went as a group of ten to fifteen, the cell
phones were turned off and the doors were
closed." Working in groups gave women power
and confidence.
By the end of three years, the eight Centers
in different parts of the disaster region had
reached out to about 10,000 women. Each of
the Centers became independent women's pro-
duction cooperatives, providing child care ser-
vices. Several women set up individual and col-
lective businesses, and joined savings and loan
groups, which they learned from the SSP. Wo-
men leadership was recognized in their commu-
nities, and the gender stereotypes changed in at
least some officials' minds. Another important
outcome was that some of the leaders partici-
pated in peer exchanges in the post-conflict re-
gion in Southeastern Turkey. This also oc-
curred internationally in India, Bulgaria, and
Iran, where they met and shared their exper-
iences with peer groups.
The main lessons from these case studies
can be summarized as follows: Grassroots wo-
men can play leadership roles in the develop-
ment of their communities after disasters, but it
is critical to capture the momentum early. It is
also important to start organizing with a long-
term perspective from the start, during the
emergency phase. Working in groups is em-
powering for women. Creating physical spaces,
like community centers, is critical for women to
support each other and organize. This allows
them to develop new skills and livelihood activi-
ties, while developing a group identity and
maintaining their activism in the community. A
long-term development perspective is critical.
Most of the relief groups come in and distribute
food, clothing, or build some houses and a reha-
bilitation center. They leave when their
projects are over. It's important to be there to
work with the communities in the long-term to
sustain the development efforts.
There are several constraints to women's
participation in post-disaster efforts. Probably
the most important is that there are still miscon-
ceptions about women's groups and their con-
tributions. These misconceptions include that
 WOMEN'S RIGHTS LAW REPORTER [Vol. 28:25 2007]

women's organizations are small-scale, women lead to minimal funding, as well as a lack of le-
are passive, and women's incomes are supple- gal and political support to sustain and institu-
mentary, even though there is plenty of evi- tionalize programs initiated and developed by
dence to the contrary. Such misconceptions grassroots women's groups.