Changing gender attitudes in India one family at a time

All efforts to build back better after the pandemic would be strengthened if women had more agency in autonomy, decision-making, and power within the family structure and community. Particular attention must be given to adolescent girls who are facing several challenges as a fallout of the pandemic, among them early marriage.

An interesting experiment to enable adolescent girls to champion changes related to their health, education, and marriage, among other things, is the Sphoorthi project, funded by Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives (APPI) and implemented by the non-governmental organisation (NGO), Karnataka Health Promotion Trust (KHPT), over the last four years in 51 villages of Koppal district in northern Karnataka. It covers 4,600 adolescent girls from marginalised families and uses a framework that recognises the importance for vulnerable groups to overcome their disadvantageous positions and gain agency in three interrelated domains: Power within (self-esteem and self-efficacy), power with (others), and power over (resources).

Satyanarayana Ramanaik, thematic lead, adolescent health, KHPT, says, “After a year of Sphoorthi’s intervention, we realised the importance of addressing the parentdaughter relationship. Especially once the girls attain menarche, communication and interactions between the father and daughter were less in the rural context. We have been working with parents and daughters and we found that the daughters’ wishes and wants were communicated to the fathers through their mothers. This affects the girl’s autonomy and negotiation power. The Sphoorthi intervention made a conscious effort in shifting this norm.”

The peer role model approach to empower adolescent girls to make decisions that impact their education, nutrition, and social relations resulted in these role model girls training their peers in their villages. Some of the key achievements of Sphoorthi included the positive changes around the increase in the girls’ decisionmaking capacity and involvement in key decisions about their lives, increased selfesteem and self-worth, improved parentdaughter relationship, better nutrition levels and reduction in school drop-out.

The multifaceted intervention model starts with developing the capacity of the girls and engaging the family and then providing platforms for the girls to engage with community members and boys. The interventions create an enabling environment for helping families understand the importance of educating girls and gender equity.

The interventions with boys are to transform their attitudes towards gender, emphasising the right of adolescent girls to a life free of violence and abuse. The interventions with the community are to help understand the importance of educating girls, gender norms, and the consequences of early marriage and teenage pregnancy.

To ensure the sustainable transfer of learnings and attitudes from the role models and peer girls, Sphoorthi established groups and collectives of girls at the village, cluster and taluk levels to help them sustain the change process. The Karnataka government now plans to scale up the effort.

Ramanna, a father from Budhgumpa village, Koppal district says, “After SSLC (secondary school), we asked our daughter to quit school for two years. But after Sphoorthi came into our village, I wanted my child to grow, so I enrolled her in a college. Now she is in her second year, PUC (pre-university course). We earlier were superstitious, but now we challenge those superstitions. Our daughters have progressed. In our opinion, our children are our inspiration.”

lalita.panicker@hindustantimes.com

The views expressed are personal