Gender Equality - Resources

Redefining women’s citizenship to engender governance: A civil society campaign

Jashodhara Dasgupta and Shahira Naim

Based on a collective project to document cases of women’s rights violations in Uttar Pradesh as part of monitoring the state implementation of the international treaty CEDAW, a group of activists of Uttar Pradesh met at Lucknow on 9 November 2003, and planned how to demand state accountability for wilful neglect of women’s rights. This paper provides a background to the situation of women in Uttar Pradesh and sets the context of the campaign. It provides a brief description of the campaign strategies used in the first and second phases, and brings out the experiences of the campaigners with these strategies, as well as other outcomes. Finally the paper attempts to analyze the campaign and the lessons learnt from it towards a set of recommendations in the conclusion.

Campaign on CEDAW Brief Report

Women organizations in partnership with community-based groups of Uttar Pradesh sought to make a claim for women’s citizen rights within the framework of state accountability in late 2003 through a campaign "Complete Citizen Total Rights."

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