Woman Researcher Journey Initiative

The Vision:
“Solutions Begin with Small Ideas” is the slogan the Center for Civil Society and Democracy is building the vision based on it to promote democracy in Syria, as solutions can be generated if the context is well analyzed. Solutions should be based on a realistic, objective and critical analysis of the situation, which can be only done through solid background of researches.

The Objective of The Researcher’s Journey Initiative:
Since 2011, Syrian women have been playing an important and leading role in the Syrian context in all fields of activism. However, women face extra challenges due to the stereotyping and the preset unfair social roles. On that, much support and empowerment was required for them, and this is what the “Women for the Future of Syria” Program implemented by the Center for Civil Society and Democracyhas been trying to achieve. Since the inception of the Program, the program has been empowering women and supporting their access to decision-making at all levels, in addition to supporting the initiatives to mitigate gender-based violence, which includes eliminating the stereotype in the community.
The “Researcher Journey” initiative is one of the opportunities provided by the Center for Civil Society and Democracy to support and empower women who are interested to engage in the research field in general, and in the political and gender fields in particular, due to the need for a gender and feminist vision in understanding the transformations taking place in the Syrian society, in order to reach to realistic and fair solutions that can be equally applied to all segments of society.

Stages of the initiative
The initiative is divided into three stages:
The beginner’s stage: This stage aims to build a common conceptual base on social research, introducing the stages of social research, and the types of social research, with a focus on the basic steps of the research (determining the problem, setting goals, and procedural concepts). The workshop included choosing a research topic for each participant that she will work on during the initiative period, and two workshops have been conducted.

The second stage: included providing the participants with the basics of developing social research tools (questionnaire, interview, focus group discussion, content analysis, case study), in addition to sampling methods.
The third stage: included training on data analysis, academic writing, and gender-sensitive writing.
It should be noted that the participants were coached during the period of the workshops by academic supervisors, who supervise groups of participants, as well as coach in various topics that help them to develop their research capabilities, and complete the research project that they chose in the first phase of the initiative.