Promoting Political participation of Single women

Participation in and election to local self-governance bodies, especially
village assemblies has afforded single women the opportunity to represent
village-level concerns as well as women’s issues and emerge as local
leaders for change. An increasing number of organized single women, who
are socially conscious, confident and aware, have been elected to local
village assemblies. Single women have always expressed that their
association with the networks and collectives awakened in them a political
and civic consciousness, which inspired many of them to contest local
elections. In the experience of the SIWONET, Networks of single women
have a great potential to present single women with a platform to
challenge and change existing power relations.
More often than not, women’s active and democratic participation in local
politics stems from their experience in grassroots advocacy. However, for
the state to ensure substantive political participation of women, it would
have to acknowledge an existing hostility to women’s issues and a male
bias in the composition, functioning and normative values in the
administrative institutions. SIWONET is working to actively address the
host of difficult challenges single women face including discrimination,
harassment and lack of women’s participation in decision making
processes.