Gender as Key in Community Participation

Abstract

The notion of community participation is longstanding in the development field and aims to bring marginalized voices into development processes to ensure more equitable development (Cornwall 2003). While today it is deemed critical that projects and programs involve local communities ? to the point of it being mandatory ? the extent of this participation (Table 9.1) and who participates are contentious topics. For instance, while in many instances when community participation is purported as the foundation of a project, in actuality it involves selective participation, whereby wealthier, more educated, more visible and more vocal individuals (Botes and van Rensburg 2000) are able to be involved in the development process. Engaging with only certain groups and community representatives is a pitfall that many projects fail to overcome, as other important groups are overlooked during the development process