Participatory action research (PAR) in women's health: SARTHI, India

Abstract

I would like to place these reflections in the context of my own experiences, both personal and work-related. I do this because I believe that I am typical of my kind, an activist and a practitioner working on women's issues. My educational background and training have contributed to the way I see myself. I have been a practitioner concerned with pragmatic action to bring about social change. I understood research as something lofty and abstract, concerned with a world of ideas. I have had, in fact, a mortal fear of research, resulting in a tendency to distance myself mentally from anything which was even remotely research-like. Second, somewhere quite early in my working life, I began seeing myself as an enabler, a facilitator for empowerment. This commitment to empowerment grew and gradually I began recognizing this, and around nine years ago I made some very conscious choices about my future work which I decided was to be in the area of women's empowerment. It is against this background that I shall examine the topic of PAR in women's health. What implications and meaning does PAR have for practitioners and for women's empowerment? In order to arrive at a conceptual understanding of PR for women's health action, I shall draw upon the last nine years' experiences that I have had working with Social Action for Rural and Tribal Inhabitants of India (SARTHI).