Women Legal Para-workers

Creating an awareness of the legal rights that women enjoy, and identifying and training legal para-workers to help the village women access these rights both in their homes and in the gram sabhas are steadily showing results, in terms of empowerment of these women and their position in their social milieu.

T raining and building the capacity of women in legal matters is a response to a felt need. This need had been frequently expressed by women, particularly the aggrieved, in SHG meetings. SHG members would often stress on the need for greater legal awareness and the need for networking with other gender-based groups rather than working in isolation. Borrowing from the experience of other groups, it was believed, would save the SHGs from trying to reinvent the wheel.

Recognizing this, a training was organized in Saharanpur in 2005–06, in collaboration with Jagoree. It was held in the campus of one of the partner agencies of Jagori called Disha. About 20 women, including Community Resource Persons (CRPs), were selected for the training. The other trainees comprised women members of SHGs that fell under the ambit of the Narmada Mahila Sangh (NMS). NMS was formed in 2001 as a federating body of 600 SHGs spread across the two districts of Hoshangabad and Betul.

The training shed light on different legal recourses available to a woman in trouble. Crucial aspects such as how does one go about filing a First Information Report (FIR), what are the precautions a woman is required to take at this stage, and what sections of the various Acts apply in different instances. Women were taken to a court and familiarized with the procedures, to remove any inhibitions they may have. What made the training special was that care was taken to ensure that even the illiterate women succeeded in grasping the basic content of the training.