Empowerment approaches to gender-based violence: Women's courts in Delhi slums

This descriptive study of an Indian nongovernmental organization (NGO) interprets bow women are redefining traditional understandings of female roles in Delhi slums. An empowerment framework, which focuses on individual and group capacities, is used to gain insight into a unique approach to self-governance. In addition to counseling women, perpetrators are held accountable through an indigenous form of resolving conflict that has been adapted to feminist principles, known as mahila panchayats, or women's courts. Data were combined from in-depth interviews with both NGO staff and women seeking help at the NGO and from observations of NGO activities, including mahila panchayat hearings and counseling sessions. In all cases, the mahila panchayat required that women receive financial maintenance. Debt-repayment strategies and legal counsel related to acquiring property empowered women to obtain resources. Most of the women (10) who brought disputes against their husbands wanted to reconcile. The NGO staff and mahila panchayats engage the husbands, who generally comply with the mahila panchayat mandates. Awareness of gender inequity is best observed by the NGO staff and mahila panchayat members through their understandings of the perceived causes of violence, which in turn reveals how violence is addressed by them. Family perpetrators generally deny their abusive behavior or rationalize it in order to legitimize their conduct. By publicly challenging women's subordination by the husband and in-laws, women become agents in developing a new understanding of gender-based violence-that physical and emotional abuse against women, for any reason, is unacceptable. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.