Expanding horizons: Women’s voices in community-driven development in the Cameroon grasslands

Abstract

Communities are increasingly becoming development spaces where members are dynamic actors in fashioning issues of common interest. This paper explores women's efforts at building social capital for communitarian ventures in selected rural localities of the Cameroon grasslands. It is argued that effective participation in raising livelihoods and infrastructure provisioning is facilitated through women's social networks (njangis). The paper situates the gender concerns in community participation, rekindled through village development associations (VDAs) -crucial in needs identification, prioritization and execution of identified projects. Based on focused field studies in selected localities, it is established that due to their low social status, workloads and tight schedule, women remain on the sidelines of the leadership in VDAs. However, women's in-cash or in-kind contribution remains crucial to the successful implementation of projects. Enhancing female participation hinges on efforts at erasing cultural stereotypes that project women as domestic workers, improving literacy, increased access to productive resources especially land, direct support to women's agricultural activity and improved rural infrastructure (roads, water supply, and electricity) that is compromising women's participation and empowerment drive.

Re-Inventing Community Development: Utilizing Relational Networking and Cultural Assets for Infrastructure Provision

“…In fostering women's empowerment, there is a NACDA women's wing; a good arena for women's issues to be factored into debates at general assemblies. In terms of power relations and the influence of patriarchy through men's dominance of NACDA general executive [1,15], women are negotiating these relations of power as part of re-inventing CD by channeling their voices through NACDA assemblies, women's enclaves and associational networks, the Fon's senior wife 'nkeum mengye', who doubles as women's emissary for the NACDA [13,47].…”

Emerging Networks of Organized Urban Poor: Restructuring the Engagement with Government Toward the Inclusion of the Excluded

“…Since the seminal work of Whyte (1943), however, the existence of indigenous organizations in informal settlements has been analyzed and can now count on an extensive literature about ''social organization in the slums'' that points out the richness of ties and the propulsive tension to self-help of irregular settlements dwellers, who often develop some basic or complex forms of community infrastructure and services themselves (Turner 1988;Uduku 1994;Olowu and Erero 1996;Nwangwu 1998;Burra et al 2003;Ruskulis 2003;Fonchingong 2006).…”

“…Within the extensive literature about the role of women in development programs, an interesting and recent work that focuses on women social networks as a facilitating tool for enhancing participation in raising livelihoods and infrastructure provisioning in CDD programs isFonchingong (2006).…”

Gender and community-oriented wildlife conservation: views from project supervisors in India

“…Numerous studies have found that gender and other social factors (such as class, caste, race, and ethnicity) influence the use of environmental resources, and thus are important to consider in community-oriented conservation projects (Agarwal 1992;Leach 1992;Green et al 1998;Rocheleau et al 1996;Resurreccion and Elmhirst 2008). Women and men often differ in terms of access, use, and knowledge of specific resources such as forests, fisheries, grasslands, water sources, and agroecosystems (e.g., Abramovitz 1994;Thomas-Slayter and Rocheleau 1995;Fortmann 1996;Carney 1996;Schroeder 1999;Bennett 2005;Fochingong 2006;Momsen 2007;Hawkins and Seager 2010;Nuijten 2010). Including both women and men in conservation projects has been shown to improve conservation outcomes: Agarwal's (2009) study of gender composition in membership of 135 community-based forest management groups in India and Nepal found that improvements in forest condition, forest regeneration, and canopy growth were significantly related to a higher proportion of women in the decision-making bodies.…”