Women Community Organizers often Engage Popular Struggles on More Than Research Paper - 1

Women Community Organizers often Engage Popular Struggles on More Than One Front - Research Paper Example Communities to not form by themselves, but they are organized so that a strong relationship is built among the participants. This process of building a community and sustaining it throughout the period is called ‘community organizing’ and the process involves not only building a network of individuals, but also the identification of goals and action towards those specific goals. According to Snow, et al (1986), the process of community organization can mean the entire process of organizing individuals, sorting out the relationships, identification of goals and paths, mobilization of individuals and maintenance of a strong network. Until sometime back, community organizing was not a very popular subject with the scholars (Davis, 1981). Therefore, very little is known about the origin of the theories of community management and whether, the theories of social movements can be applied to the way in which community organization works (Stoecker, 1993). To this caveat of liter ature of social movements and community organization, there is also the lack of awareness of what roles that gender discourses play in these communities. Only in the past decades, gender has received a high consideration (Robnett l996), Gender, which can be considered to be a social product of any interaction is also redefined and reconstructed through any social movement or community organization. With any community organization or social movement, the differences and inequalities in terms of gender equations come out more strongly. According to Brandwein (1987), gender has an effect on the way in which problems are identified and choices are made. For example, in a community or social movement, the responsibilities that individuals have outside of the movement are not taken into account (Stoecker, 1992) and when it is taken into account, the way in which women are involved gets restricted. In the New York Tenants movement, the role of women was confined to the most basic of activi ties, where as men were involved in complex issues. (Lawson and Barton, 1980). Therefore, the community organization work contributed by women during social movement gets ignored. Robnett (1996) has challenged the narrations and accounts of movements that have ignores and neglected the role of women activists. Barnett (1993) has challenged the research related to social movement and community management that projects the spokesperson of the movement while ignore the workers who work at grass root, who are often women. Therefore, even though there is a very high involvement of women organizers in the field of community organization, the image and projection always comes out to be that of a male dominated effort. Even though these movements talk about democracy in participation, the actual way in which these movements are projected and carried out do not practice this democracy in terms of gender equations. According to Weil (1986), the strategies get influenced on ‘macho powerà ¢â‚¬â„¢ and zero-sum competitiveness. As a result of this approach, the challenges that women face in participation in these movements is not confined to the direct engagement in these movements and they face challenges at multiple levels. Apart from contributing to these movements, there is lack of visibility, pressure to take up more grass root level or administrative challenges, making sure that other responsibilities such as child care and home management happens smoothly. This study takes a detailed look at the way in which women community organizers engage in popular struggles in more than one front. For any woman who participates in these community organiz