Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) are increasingly responsible for implementing development projects in the global south. In India, the NGO sector is an expanding area of both social service provision and employment. Many Indian NGOs take a gendered approach to development. They specifically design programs to bring women into the social and economic lives of their communities. These NGOs also hire women from a variety of backgrounds to implement women's programs. Despite their women's development goals, some NGOs cannot accept their own women employees as full participants in their activities and management. The research project derives from this paradox. The research investigates gendered, social relations inside rural NGOs for women fieldworkers' daily lives and village level outcomes. Previous feminist critiques of development have focused on the impacts of women's programs for village women, but this case study concerns itself with women fieldworkers' experiences and practices. The investigator will explore the process of implementing women's development for its effects on the lives of women employed in NGOs. The investigator will also analyze the creation of gendered roles and spaces inside NGOs, and examine the relationship between women fieldworkers' status in their organizations and the success or failure of women's development programs. The research is an intensive analysis of the work of a rural NGO in Rajasthan, India. It involves an extended period of participant-observation fieldwork, interviews and focus groups for the purpose of obtaining directly data about women's working experiences and the impact of their practices for village level results. The research will also use data from already completed research with a separate NGO. Extended fieldwork with different NGOs offers two strong data sets of NGOs' internal gender relations across development approaches, institutional structures and financial means. The researcher hypothesizes that their differences in size, approach and financial means will contribute to different levels of empowerment for their women fieldworkers, and thus, different village level outcomes.
This research advances work on development by exploring how gendered relationships inside NGOs influence project outcomes. Given the channeling of huge sums to NGOs from foreign and local donors for development projects, the research will contribute to an understanding of NGOs' internal struggles and their ramifications. Rising incorporation of women into development projects, both as clients and facilitators, signals that research is needed on changes occurring within organizations as women are hired, and the implications of gendered approaches to development for target populations and NGO employees.
