Training and Resource Allocation as Related to Women's Poverty Alleviation

NGO Consultation Breakout Session On Poverty Eradication

46th Session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, New York

March 3, 2002

Talk by Janak Palta McGilligan[*]

Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends,

Greetings from India!

I feel honoured to be with you all at this historic session dedicated to the women of the world. My talk is based on my learning experience while working with the rural and tribal women of Central India for 17 years as well as being part of the process of the women’s movement for many years.

It is a pity that we are living in a world divided into grades of ‘first world,’ ‘second world’ and ‘third world,’ as unequal partners, mainly on the basis of poverty. However, each world is confronted with the issue of poverty in one way or another. Women’s poverty alleviation has been a challenging issue and a major concern at various international and national levels all over the world for at least the last two decades. This subject has drawn the attention of all the NGO’s, governments and the United Nations. It was very clearly recognized at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing that the policies and strategies to deal with poverty of women have to be seen through women's eyes independently as well as in interconnection with poverty in general. The Beijing Platform for Action identified it as one of the critical areas of concern, which led to the adoption of Resolution 40/9 in 1996, 52/193 in 1997, a report on 118 National Plans of Action in April, 2000, by the U.N. Division for the Advancement of Women, and ultimately led to Resolution 2000/26.[1]

This process influenced the whole world in some way or the other. A majority of the governments in the world included eradication of women's poverty as part of their agendas in women’s policies. Aid became a major tool. Numerous approaches, strategies, programmes and packages were developed. A major shift has been from a welfare approach to an empowerment approach, and from a model of economic development to a new model of sustainable development. Despite inclusion of this issue in plans and policies, it continues to be a serious issue, specially viewed in the context of the process of globalisation. A majority of the world feels that the process of globalisation has increased women’s poverty.

The U.N. Expert Group Meeting entitled, “Empowerment of Women Throughout the Life Cycle as a Transformative Strategy for Poverty Eradication,” held in November 2001 in New Delhi, drew attention to the following points relating to women’s poverty[2].

Increase in proportion of work

  • Women are certainly more likely to be working outside the home today than ever before. Between the 1950s and the end of the 1990s, the proportion of women aged 20–59 in the labour force increased from around one-third to one-half. The current participation rates by region range from 14 per cent in North Africa to 76 per cent in East and Central Europe. In some countries, women’s participation has increased to a greater extent than men’s, at least statistically. In half the developing countries for which data were available, over the period 1975–95, the female participation rate rose while the male rate fell. The global labour force has become more female, rising from 36 percent in 1960 to 40 per cent by 1997.

Decline in wages, and more demand for women workers

  • First, more women now have to work to ensure family survival in the face of declining real wages and the increased monetary cost of subsistence resulting from cutbacks in both public services and subsidies for staple foods. Second, the number of women-headed households in which women are required to meet the monetary cost of household survival from their own labour has increased. Third, the demand for women workers of ‘cheap’ and ‘docile’ female labour has grown in particular sectors of the economy experiencing long-term growth. Many industries employing a high proportion of women have expanded rapidly in response to globalisation. Much of this is low-skilled manufacturing (notably in garments, footwear and electronic products), ‘non-traditional’ agricultural products, and declines in fertility are other important factors behind the increase in women’s labour force participation.

Decline in proportion of secure jobs/employment

  • There has been a decline in the proportion of jobs that have security of employment, rights against unfair dismissal, pension rights, health insurance rights and maternity rights. Women in many economic sectors rarely enjoy the wide spectrum of social and economic rights specified in national and international legislation, such as the right to favourable conditions of work, the right to equal pay for equal work, the right to social protection or the right to form and join trade unions.

Increased risk of landlessness and loss of livelihood

  • In some countries, legislative ceilings on land holdings have been removed, thereby increasing the ease of ownership of agricultural land for commercial and speculative purposes, while exposing smaller and marginal farmers, some women amongst them, to increasing risks of landlessness and loss of livelihood.

Limited or no access to education

  • Girls together with women carry the burden of unpaid and caring work within the household and therefore cannot attend school or are the first to drop out of school.
  • Education is an important facilitating factor for women's empowerment and for eradicating poverty among women as it expands women’s capabilities. During the period 1980-1994 the gap between girls’ enrolments and boys’ enrolment at the primary level narrowed in developing countries. But there are some important anomalies that stand out. In the case of sub-Saharan Africa, the closing of the gender gap in some countries is attributed to a decline in the enrolment of boys and only a marginal increase in the participation of girls.

According to UNESCO data, girls’ net enrolment in secondary school declined between 1985 and 1997 in 10 out of 33 countries in sub-Saharan Africa; in 7 out of 11 countries in Central and Western Asia; in 2 out of 21 countries in Asia and the Pacific; in 6 out of 26 in Latin America and the Caribbean; in 6 out of 9 in Eastern Europe; and in 1 out of 23 countries in Western Europe and other developed countries. It is important that even simple indicators like gross school enrolment ratios (for different levels of education), are not available at all in many countries and regions, and are provided only on an irregular basis in many others. According to the U.N. Human Development Report 2000, the data for the Human Poverty Index (HPI) are available only for 103 countries. Wage data disaggregated by sex are available from the International Labour Organization for only 46 countries.

Poverty as Manifested through Other Indicators

Poverty is linked to a lack of access to, and control over, productive resources, physical goods and income, which results in individual and/or group deprivation, vulnerability and powerlessness. It has various manifestations, including hunger and malnutrition, ill-health, poor health care, lack of safe housing and paid work environments. Poverty also includes experiences of economic, political and social discrimination. Home-based and contractual workers are most vulnerable to shifts in production due to economic restructuring.

The Status of Women in India

The causes of women’s poverty in India largely emerge from the inadequacies of a traditional social structure, caste and class hierarchies, ethnic or religious discriminations and a heavily gender-based distribution system. The most important thing is that the poverty rate among women has been growing by 50 percent over the past two decades[3]. Poor women in India are burdened with low levels of literacy, whilst large numbers of children are unable to attend school and significant gender disparities exist in educational achievement. At the same time, high rates of communicable disease and high maternal and infant mortality rates undermine poor people's potential to rid them of poverty. The major sources of ill health are infectious and parasitic diseases, respiratory illness and prenatal causes. HIV infection rates are increasing rapidly. The key challenge faced by the union and state governments over the next decade is

  • to address effectively the priority human development needs of poor people in general and poor women in particular; and
  • to develop effective, equitable and efficient health and education systems.

Around 300 million Indians, more than 30% of the population, cannot read and write and nearly 40 million children aged 6-14 years are out of school. Literacy rates have risen from 18.5% to 64% in the last 50 years but there still remains a major challenge for government in providing effective basic education for all.

There is a vicious cycle between poverty and ill health. Poor women suffer greater levels of ill health, and poor health undermines people's ability to escape poverty. Average life expectancy is just 62 years. Infant and child mortality rates are high at 77 and 102 per 1,000 live births, respectively. For instance, according to the Indian Human Development Report, female life expectancy in Madhya Pradesh, where we work, is the lowest in the country; the female infant mortality rate is 97/1,000.

Allocation for funds required for training

The importance of training

Although the empowerment of women has been acknowledged in polices and programmes at the national and international levels as a critical factor in breaking the cycle of poverty, it has not yet been sufficiently taken into account and translated into action, due to a lack of implementation or an unjust, unfair and corrupt distribution system.[4] It is crucial to identify specific constraints and needs of women throughout the life cycle. For example, the selective allocation of resources for empowerment through holistic training focused on formal and non-formal education and preventive education, will help in bringing gender equality in economic and social sectors, as well as for overall poverty eradication. Education and health investment at the early phase of women’s lives can result in high dividends of empowerment, which can contribute to breaking the cycle of inter-generational transfer of poverty. Adolescent girls, in particular, are often the first to drop out of school and miss the education and training that could enable them to have better lives.

Allocation of resources for treatment of root cause of poverty, not its symptoms

All over the world governments and aid organizations run single issue projects focused on such problems as selective female foeticide, anaemia, unsafe baby deliveries, polio eradication, H.I.V./AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, family planning, contaminated water, water borne diseases, lack of sanitation, environmental pollution, micro-credit/self help groups, high infant mortality rates, gender inequality, violence in the family, harmful social and health practices, and economic and political inequality. Allocating funds in order to extend and expand educational programmes to include girls and women of all ages who have been excluded from education during their childhood and adolescence, recognizing that adult literacy, non-formal education, awareness building and skills training are some of the ways to ensure empowerment of poor women to participate in the labour market. Other ways include developing educational and training policies and programmes that will enhance the capabilities of girls and women through formal and non-formal education, and ensure that these policies and programmes aim at breaking the gender-stereotyped provision of knowledge and skills and promote images of women and girls in positions of power, value, prestige and public presence. Other ways include identifying and strengthening training and re-training, as well as vocational education in non-traditional areas to expand women’s employment opportunities with empowering implications, and promoting vocational training in sectors with growth potential. Other ways include training aimed at building their capacity within the micro- credit and micro-finance programmes to enhance women’s capabilities, status, bargaining power and empowerment and ensuring that these programmes do not reinforce women's traditional roles within households and communities.

It has been agreed in the above-mentioned expert group meeting in Delhi that empowerment draws on and builds on positive aspects of a variety of knowledge systems, including indigenous knowledge systems. A large majority of the world’s peoples understand themselves not only as material beings but also as spiritual beings and are as much concerned with social and moral well being as with material progress. Hence, empowerment programmes aimed at a process of transformation throughout the life cycle of women should draw on resources of both reason and faith in the process of individual and societal transformation. There is a need through facilitating access to training, entrepreneurship development, credit, technical services and marketing facilities.

The impact of empowerment can be seen in a progression consisting of changed individuals, changed groups/communities, new organizations of the poor, poor women-friendly institutions in the support system and new social movements (e.g., The Self-Employed Women's Association, SEWA and the CHIPKO Movement in India).

If 40% of the funds for poverty alleviation programmes were allocated for training, it will result in empowering women as agents of social change by adopting an integrated approach towards empowering women through the above-mentioned programmes, including the convergence of existing services, organizing women into self-help groups, and equipping women with skills in modern upcoming trades/enterprise. Therefore, it is important to develop specific policy and programme recommendations on how to empower women. To substantiate this I will share a hands-on experience.

The Barli Development Institute for Rural Women: A successful experience of sustainable community development through training of grassroots rural and tribal women as human resources

Operating in the region since 1985, the Barli Development Institute for Rural Women in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, runs six-month and one-year residential training programmes for rural and tribal girls between the ages of 16 and 25 from a number of districts in the state. The project addresses the problems of female illiteracy, high rates of female infant mortality, high rates of school dropouts, no access to information, economic and social resources, no vocational skills, male-dominated institutions, and male-dominated governance. The training courses include personal development, literacy and numeracy, pre- and post-natal care, health and hygiene, and income generating skills such as cutting and tailoring, textile painting and fabric designing, Hindi typing and word processing. In addition to this, the trainees take an active role in maintaining the gardens in which the Institute is set, learning about irrigation and growing vegetables for consumption and acquiring skills for trade. Since 1997, the Barli Development Institute for Rural Women has been accredited to the National Open School as a vocational centre, allowing trainees to take recognised exams in cutting and tailoring, typing as well as academic exams of the 10th standard.

Target groups

The Institute works with Bhil, Bhilala, Korku, and Baria tribes, which are scheduled tribes, and Balai Harijans, which is a scheduled caste. These are all the lowest in the Hindu hierarchy and they are considered untouchables. These two groups make up about 35% of the total population of the state. This brings down all the statistics of development. There is no interdining or intermarrying with them. They are not allowed at the same places of worship, sources of drinking water, cremation areas, and even their hostels are separate in all the educational institutions. It is one of the results of the efforts of the Institute that within project areas these relations have improved significantly. The women and girls come from families who are mostly poor. They have no land or have uncultivable, small holdings. Women have been the worst discriminated against in both the societies; all indicators of development are one of the lowest in rank.

The Institute has three main training programmes for empowerment:

  1. Community Volunteers: a six-month residential course for women who return to their villages as voluntary community workers.
  2. Area Co-ordinators: an integrated, more extensive one-year course to train selected women to act as area co-ordinators and assist the graduates of the six-month course.
  3. Family Support: activities include a three-day workshop for the family members of the trainees, and a ten-day course for couples on Family Life Skills.

Other related Activities

  • Gender Sensitisation Training of grass root institutions
  • Capacity Building Training of Gram Panchayats (Village Councils)
  • Capacity Building Training of Gram Sabhas (Village Community Collective)
  • Indigenous Learning and Documentation
  • Dissemination of two-way information in local language is carried out by publishing a monthly newsletter for all graduates

Curriculum Development

The development of the curriculum has taken place over the seventeen years since the Institute's inception. It has evolved to take account of the backgrounds of the trainees, using materials and ideas that are familiar in a tribal or rural setting and are relevant to their lives. By using ex-trainees and professional advice in the development of the curriculum, as well as letting the teaching and training style and content evolve gradually and organically, the Institute has created a set of theoretical and practical curricula that encourage the trainees to take an active role in improving the quality of life for themselves, their families and their communities. The curriculum content focuses on the issues and ideas that the trainees’ lives revolve around. For example, the health curriculum teaches about immunisations, the treatment of common rural illnesses, healthy motherhood and how to care for children. The way that the curriculum is taught is also centred around the trainees themselves, the trainers working alongside the group facilitators to gear the lessons toward the trainees themselves. Ongoing training helps to monitor and develop the curriculum in an effective way.