"Male membership needs to be encouraged in order to make women's organization free from gender bias." Comment.

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Ghissu Editorial · Accepted Answer

Encouraging men as members can reduce gender bias by reaching male gatekeepers and reframing women's issues as social issues, but it cannot replace women's leadership and safe spaces. The sarpanch pati phenomenon shows how male presence can capture spaces meant for women.

**Introduction**

Patriarchy is reproduced by men and women alike, so a women's organisation that speaks only to women may address half the problem, as UN Women's HeForShe campaign (2014) argues. Yet the autonomous women's movement of the 1970s and 1980s insisted on women-only spaces for good reason.

**How Male Membership Can Reduce Gender Bias**

1. **Changing the gatekeepers**: Fathers, husbands and panchayat leaders decide whether a girl studies or a wife works, and male members can carry the message into these spaces.
2. **From "women's issue" to social issue**: Men help reframe dowry, violence and unpaid care as society's problems, countering the charge that women's groups are anti-men.
3. **Proven male allies**: Mumbai's Men Against Violence and Abuse (MAVA) sensitises young men, as Vidyasagar's campaign for the Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act 1856 once did.

**Why Male Membership Is Not a Cure-all**

SKETCH: spectrum | Men in Women's Organisations
left: Women-only spaces
right: Male capture
- Autonomous collectives
- Men as allies
- Shared campaigns
- Men in leadership

1. **Risk of capture**: The "sarpanch pati" phenomenon, where husbands run seats reserved for women, shows how male presence can take over women's spaces.
2. **Safe spaces matter**: Survivors often speak only in women-only forums; SEWA (founded 1972 by Ela Bhatt) and Kudumbashree built confidence because women led them.
3. **Bias is structural**: Gender bias comes from patriarchy, not membership, and men who join without examining privilege can reproduce paternalism.

**Conclusion**

The statement is partly valid: men should be welcomed as allies and members, but leadership and agenda-setting must stay with women. That partnership turns women's development into women-led development, in the spirit of Article 15(3).

"Male membership needs to be encouraged in order to make women's organization free from gender bias." Comment.

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