Mainstreaming Gender in Community Organizing

Community organizing has been adopted in the Philippines as one of the approaches in transforming communities for more than three decades now but it has been observed that just like other development work, it is gender-blind. Sarah Longwe in her article, Gender Awareness: The Missing Element in the Third World Projects, said “that the general lack of attention to women’s needs within the development process stems from a general lack of gender awareness amongst those who plan and implement development projects”. She added “the project target groups are often treated as undifferentiated group of people without recognizing the special needs of women”.