The Benefits of Organizational Diversity: Resource Exchange and Collaboration among Women’s Groups in New Delhi, India

Activists understand that achieving social reform via advocacy campaigns requires competencies in a wide range of cultural and political venues. However, differences in movement organizations’ identities and subsequent strategy choices often lead to inter-organizational conflict that detracts from achieving the desired reform goals. In this study, the argument is presented that the exchange of resources, such as proficiencies and skills derived from organizational specialization, in combination with strong personal ties between the organizations’ leadership structure, which forge a degree of trust despite ideological differences, will lead to cooperation. To understand when groups engage in strategic resource exchange and inter-organizational cooperation within a particular issue field, several women’s rights action campaigns organized by women’s groups in New Delhi, India are analyzed. The qualitative data utilized in this chapter consist of in-depth interviews with members of several women’s groups as well as organizational documents; thus, enabling a process-tracing approach to support the argument that personal ties drive the formation of informal inter-group coalition building to advance women’s rights in India.