In the context of rural India, there isn’t really a need to explain what kind of identities women find themselves trapped in. The challenges of this identity trap are well known. What is needed is to work around these challenges, while understanding them, to aid women to move towards skilled work. Innovation in building capacities is often unlocked, when both genders are treated as equals. Moreover, women’s involvement in economic activities seems to result largely in a ‘benefits for all’ situation. The World Bank in fact, calls the restriction of economic opportunities for women as bad economics, as under-investing in women limits economic growth and slows down progress in poverty reduction. This article will majorly deal with offering an integrated approach to move towards skilled involvement of women in habitat services.

Numerous studies on the role of women workers in the habitat sector have indicated discrimination in many ways – disparity in wages, non-access to skills, lack of value and respect and social and family stresses due to multi-tasking with little or no social securities or facilities, such as basic sanitation and child care facilities for their children. Many a times the domestic responsibilities tied with these stereotypes is a barrier to their employment, especially in rural India, where women spend hours collecting water and fuel wood. This is despite the fact that there are a number of examples, which indicate the benefits that women bring to the sector.

Women provide a greater quality of work, as they far more careful with measurements and mixture of materials. When assessing problems they are proactive, reflecting before responding, unlike men, who react without thinking. They are patient and keen observers during trainings.

Women workers consider work ethics in high priority. They bring a high level of honesty and integrity to their work, refraining from bad habits, such as drinking and gambling (a regular feature with men), which not only affects the quantity of their work, but also the quality. Women derive a sense of pride and loyalty towards their work, and are grounded by nature, thus abstaining from migrating once they acquire higher order of skills. Unlike men, they tend to work within their local communities, contributing to local economic development. In fact in Kerala, women masons have been able to bridge the gap left by the male masons, who migrate to the gulf for construction work.

Women masons working in constructing houses effectively contribute to design processes. They ensure that the needs of the entire family are met, especially the women and the children. In fact, in JEEWOMS the women masons were able to encourage their peers to construct smokeless chulhas, which are not only efficient, but also better for the health of the women. In the nayaghar initiative of SEWA - Gujarat-based NGO, women were the ones who came up with the idea of creating rainwater harvesting structures. In Barefoot College of Tilonia Rajasthan, it was claimed that rain water harvesting structures across the state are made by women masons trained by the college.

Towards the scale up of operations, women are more likely to use their social networks to encourage their peers to take up training, to sell their products and to teach the other women. In SEWA Nirman, a wing of SEWA, the women made habitat products within their villages and thus taught other women alongside. In Barefoot College, the women solar engineers were teaching women from India and abroad to enable them in turn to solar electrify their villages. These women are a proof that language is never a barrier and used colour codes and demonstrations to pass-on their skills.

Towards an integrated approach for skilled involvement of women in habitat services

Women usually do not have a voice, but to bring forth their latent capabilities the institutions engaging with them need to make attempts to loosen knots that tie them up. The first step towards this is establishing trust with the community, for which an understanding of the culture is necessary.

Culture is very important to women. For instance, in certain cultural backgrounds (such as Gujarat and Rajasthan) the women are unable and unwilling to give up their traditional attire. In such cases, it is necessary to respect the women’s attire as attempts to have them give it up would build distrust and could cause them to give up work.

When mobilising women for training, the societal implications and gender stereotypes will have to be studied as well. It should include interacting with family members to gain trust, removing familial obstacles in the training of their women. The Barefoot college of Tilonia, for instance, brought the family members to the worksite to gain their trust. An example of tackling issues that come up with relation to gender stereotypes is in Kerala. Even in an advanced society such as Kerala, the men would break down work done by the women. To tackle this, some of the male masons were given gender training and initially accompanied them to the sites. Today these women supervise men as well.

Women in Gujarat have to walk for miles to fetch water and fuel wood. leaving them with hardly any free time to earn an income. SEWA Nirman trained the women to construct rain water harvesting structures, which helped free up a large chunk of the women’s time to take up income generating activities. However, to achieve this level of empowerment, the women need initial hand holding and motivation. Without adequate support of the organisation this cannot be achieved.

Once, the barriers to the women’s work have been adequately dealt with, a careful assessment of the women being selected is required to ensure their interest in the work. Another challenge confronted is the illiteracy among these women. The lack of education can pose a problem in training these women. This is why most of the organisations have adopted a hands-on-training process. This process usually means that institutions spend time in teaching the women the habitat skills, but for long-term replicability, a ready and understandable manual is critical, which not only takes care of the professional skills, but also interpersonal and bargaining skills. For example, in JEEWOMS Kerala a three-day life skills training was incorporated into the 40-day programme. This may not be necessary as SEWA Nirman has demonstrated. They feel that a group-based training, which involves the women together, teaches them certain soft skills like bargaining and negotiations that otherwise they are not exposed to in their day to day lives. It helps the women in terms of support, mutual understanding, savings and division of labour.

Alongside the manual, a training centre will have to be identified, which is easily accessible, safe and secure, so that the women or their families do not have any objections. The centre should incorporate basic need facilities like a crèche, toilets and a resting area as well.

The next step essentially is the training itself, which essentially should incorporate a ‘learning by doing’ methodology. The women should actively be involved in the process so that they make their mistakes visible. In fact, the Barefoot College took this one step further and let the women take on practical work with supervision, within 10 days of training, so that they could learn on site.

Post training, certification and identity cards might be necessary. In JEEWOMS and SEWA, it was seen that certification given to women helped them in credit linkages as it acted as a proof in banks. It also helped in getting them more assignments. However, in Barefoot College, they provided no certification believing that as long as the platform and support is available, certification is not necessary. This should be judged according to the organisation’s mandate and again the cultural, societal and economic context, within which the women will be working.

Lastly, there is a need for institutions to commit to the scaling up of the operations. If this is not enabled, the sustainability of the initiative will be at stake. In JEEWOMS, for example, where only the initially-trained women are currently working and there is not enough effort to bring more women into the fold. Whereas in SEWA Nirman, they have organised their company to constantly engage with the women, while upgrading their skills, as well as teaching younger unskilled women. This benefits the organisation (as it fulfils its purpose) and the women (it provides them exposure with a better source of livelihood). Additionally, related to scale up is the establishment of market linkages and providing the women with the requisite support to connect with the market, which will ensure their future self sustainability.  q