Centre for Social Research
Rural Women Empowerment Programme
(Centre for Social Research (CSR) is a registered nonprofit society of conscientious social research and action specialists. It is devoted to the objective of restructuring the existing gender relation for the empowerment of women, particularly the rural underprivileged among them through:
- mobilisation of women's participation in social action programmes,
- enhancement of their awareness, skills, productivity and creative social competence,
- removal of socio-cultural discriminations, isolation and alienation,
- eradication of sexism, gender inequalities and feminisation of poverty,
- ensuring a conducive biosocial environment for creative development, and
- extending and ensuring the socio-economic autonomy of the rural underprivileged in general and women in particular.
CSR's involvement is committed to undertaking research-supported social action programmes related to the problems of:
- redistribution of productive resources, opportunities and rights,
- campaign against feminisation of poverty, sexism and sexual division of labour as well as discriminative socio-economic processes and practices,
- women in the subsistence economy,
- political economy of women's role in social production,
- environment of women's life,
- changing interface between women and technology, and
- emergent issues of rural female headed households and adolescent girls.
The CSR has four functional areas. Research Support which is responsible for data base and information resource base for development action, for training programmes and women's development issues. Development Action takes care of conscientisation, empowerment, skill development and employment. It also includes health care and environmental conservation. Steps to promote technology acquisition, diffusion and adaption for reducing drudgery are also an integral part of CSR's action projects. Special efforts at mobilisation of women for collective action for their autonomy and equal rights form a core component in the programmes.
Training programmes, workshops and seminars on women's issues and feminist research are regularly sponsored and promoted. Search for strategies of implementation of grassroot level projects for awareness building, skill development, employment and income generation for rural women will be part of our ongoing and future endeavors.
Resource development to strengthen the organisational effectivity in providing informational, managerial, technical and logistic inputs needed for research activities and projects, development action and training are the major aims of CSR. This entails documentation, audiovisual facilities, human resources, networking, library, computerised data centre, logistic support, research and office services and communication facilities.
All the activity components at CSR and the branches of its action wing PARIVARTAN are geared to understand the problems and prospects of development of the rural underprivileged women, and reaching them the necessary and appropriate opportunities through informed development initiatives.
Conscientious public support is welcome. For more information, please write to:
The Director Centre for Social Research, E-79/9 Kishangarh, Mehrauli New Delhi-110 030, India