Abstract
Mainstreaming of gender in policy and development design in developing countries like India has consistently seen complex challenges. As the country prospers economically, leveraging innovative policy and social designs to integrate women from marginalised and vulnerable communities as active agents in the development process has been a struggle. Women often find themselves as passive recipients of gender-linked social welfare schemes, credit facilities for income-generating work, and other public participation activities. While policy tables have extended their space to women as a stakeholder group in consultative roles, the outcomes of such consultations have been far removed from what participatory and human-centred designs can do to be more gender-responsive. This research chronicles a three-year-long journey of attempting a more robust participatory approach in designing women-led grassroots labs in low-income settlements in India. The grassroots lab model keeps women’s agency at the core and envisions them as dynamic “solution-makers”. It emphasizes principles of co-creation and co-designing to increase women’s economic and civic participation in slums and urban villages. This paper presents reflections, dilemmas and insights on what participatory design can do to shape women-led community models with scalable development trajectories.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
PARTICIPATORY, WOMEN, CO-CREATE, DESIGN, AGENCY, COMMUNITY MODELS, GENDER-RESPONSIVE DEVELOPMENT, INDIA
