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Gender, Work and Organization. Vol. 11 No. 6 November 2004

Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UKand 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

WHAT THEY EARNGENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

Address for correspondence: *Bipasha Baruah, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York Univer-sity, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Canada M3J 1P3, e-mail: [email protected].

Earning Their Keep and Keeping

What They Earn: A Critique ofOrganizing Strategies for SouthAsian Women in the Informal Sector

Bipasha Baruah*

It is now widely understood that the needs of women workers in the infor-mal sector are not met by the conservative practices of labour organizationsand trade unions. While the contribution of women to the economies ofdeveloping countries is critical, women rarely find employment in the reg-ulated unionized sectors of these countries, and are found instead in over-whelming numbers in the sector that is variously termed unorganized,unprotected, unregistered or informal. This article addresses the situ-ation of women in the informal economy in South Asia. The authorexplores the major challenges and opportunities facing women in their

efforts to organize and mobilize for change. She also provides a criticalanalysis of the different types of interventions adopted by the state andcivil society organizations in South Asia to empower women in the in-formal sector. The author concludes with an attempt to identify the mix ofinterventions and strategies most needed for different social, political andeconomic circumstances.

Keywords: informal economy, women workers, South Asia, organization,mobilization

Introduction

ore than four decades of development in the Third World have notresulted in the predicted absorption, or even the significant displace-

ment, of marginal small-scale economic activities by large-scale technology-intensive ventures, even in countries that have witnessed dramatic economicgrowth and rapid industrialization. Brisk population growth, increasing

M


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606 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

Volume 11 Number 6 November 2004 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004

landlessness, inadequate social support programmes and growing rural-urban migration are presumably some of the factors that have ensured thatlarge enterprises are unable to create enough jobs to absorb the swelling sup-ply of labour. Under such circumstances, increasing numbers of urban and

rural people have been forced to, or have chosen to, create alternative sourcesof employment. All such unregistered, and therefore unrecognized, manu-facturing, service and petty trade activities have come to be known collect-ively as the informal sector, the sector of economic activity that is notregistered with government agencies and does not comply with regulationsgoverning labour practices, taxes and licensing (Dignard and Havet, 1995).

In countries like India, the informal sector accounts for 93 per cent of thetotal labour force and 64 per cent of gross domestic product (Jhabvala andSubrahmanya, 2000). Because it is contradictory and unjust to describe such

a large, dynamic workforce in terms that relegate it to a peripheral position,many authors and activists prefer to use the term self-employed, arguingthat these workers are essentially entrepreneurs, since they assume all therisks of their businesses (Bhatt, 1995; Jhabvala, 1994). I support the use of theterm self-employed to describe people who attempt to generate independ-ent livelihoods under a variety of circumstances over other terms with pejor-ative connotations such as casual work, illegal connotations such as theblack economy, derived from the Italian lavoro nero traditionally used todescribe people with connections to the mafia, or the marginal economy,

which fails utterly to capture the significant economic contributions of thesector.

My concern about the use of the term self-employed arises from the poss-ible confusion of the meaning attributed to it by western capitalism. Self-employment, in the context of the developed world implies making aninformed choice to pursue an independent livelihood in the presence of otheropportunities, while in the Third World an overwhelming number of people,especially poor women, are driven to it, not out of a desire to be entrepre-neurial, but because of a lack of options and unmet household subsistence

requirements. I will use the term self-employed or micro-entrepreneurs todescribe workers in the informal sector in this article but within the contextof the developing world described above.

The challenges of organizing women in the informal economy

The importance of organizing workers in the informal sector to occupy a cen-tral place in the economy hardly needs to be elaborated upon. Within such

movements, the integration and solidarity of women deserve special atten-tion due to a variety of social, cultural, economic and political factors thatwork against them. Indeed, in the face of globalizing economies and com-petitive industrial growth, self-employed women face bleak prospects if they


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Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004 Volume 11 Number 6 November 2004

EARNING THEIR KEEP AND KEEPING WHAT THEY EARN 607

remain isolated and unorganized. On the other hand, there are real possibil-ities for empowerment if they make a collective effort to create new workstructures and institutions and broader forms of solidarity. In numberswomen find the voice and strength to influence and challenge not just local

institutions and processes but also national and international policies andorganizations. While the benefits of organizing are quite clear, the processitself can be challenging in a variety of ways. Some of the impediments toorganizing arise from womens weak starting positions and lack of bargain-ing power while others are a result of the weaknesses of the organizationsrepresenting them. In the following pages I will attempt to provide an under-standing of some of the most persistent and widespread challenges of organ-izing women in South Asia.

Social, cultural and occupational factors

The opposition that women and their representative organizations face fromthose most likely to lose power as a result of their organized efforts toimprove working conditions, or to secure their entitlements to education,credit, social security, technology and other necessities, appears to be a com-mon thread in the accounts of womens movements for solidarity. The members of the Self Employed Womens Association (SEWA) and the WorkingWomens Forum (WWF), both in India, had to struggle against the forces of

financial exploitation, physical abuse and social harassment from middle-men, subcontractors, local gangs and the police in their efforts to unionize toeffect change in their lives and work (Rose, 1992; WWF, 2000). Similarly, theclients and members of the Grameen Bank and the Bangladesh RuralAdvancement Committee (BRAC) faced serious resistance from middlemenand moneylenders who benefited greatly from the poverty, vulnerability anddespair of poor self-employed women (Carr et al., 1996; Yunus, 1999). Sincemissing even one days work can mean a crisis in the family, women whoearn just enough each day to keep their families going are especially vulner-

able. Terrified of losing the small sporadic income that they do have, or ofhaving violence committed against them, women are initially reluctant toorganize.

These inherent and widely prevalent feelings of fear, helplessness and dis-trust are perhaps the strongest deterrents to womens organizing efforts.Their experiences of constantly being cheated make women very distrustfulof the motives of organizations attempting to organize them into unions, co-operatives, banks and other bargaining collectives. Gaining womens confi-dence and trust is one of the most crucial hurdles that organizations must get

over before they can make a difference in their lives. While womens illiteracyand their lack of knowledge of the law can also serve as impediments,the experiences of organizations like SEWA, BRAC and Proshika thathave worked consistently over the years to identify and remedy such


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shortcomings reveal that they do not pose insurmountable problems. Indeed,many women traditionally considered illiterate have gone on to hold posi-tions of authority with aplomb within such organizations. SEWA, BRAC andthe Grameen Bank have also attested that having an inadequate formal edu-

cation did not impede the decision-making capacity of members of their boards. Jhabvala (1994) notes that the SEWA co-ops run by working-classwomen are actually among the most successful.

Womens lack of mobility due to the ideology of seclusion prevalentamong many groups in South Asia also restricts them to some extent,although there are significant differences between urban and rural womenand between women from the upper classes and poorer women who, as amatter of necessity, tend to enjoy greater freedom outside the home.

The fact that women pursue their economic activities in a wide and

disparate range of trades, occupations, environments, work locations andemployment relationships comprises a major barrier to effective organizing.The absence of a fixed employer, or the difficulty of identifying one due toelaborate chains of subcontracting, is a common characteristic of this sectorand one that ensures that workers remain in precarious casual, contractual,migrant or home-based work environments. While flexibility in workinghours and in locations of work are perceived as attractive options in the for-mal sector, for socially vulnerable groups it usually translates into undesir-able working conditions. Mitter (1994) notes that

For women, flexible work often means greater insecurity, reduction inworking hours and pay, changes in shifts, loss of national insurance ben-efits, loss of overtime bonuses, and loss of holidays, maternity leave, sickpay and pension.

SEWAs protracted battle with the Indian Labour Department to unionizewomen in the informal sector in the early 1970s ensued as a result of itsinability to identify a recognizable employer to struggle against. The organ-izations astute argument that unions did not necessarily struggle against

employers, but could serve as unifying platforms for workers, combinedwith SEWAs subsequent sub-sector approach to organizing workers in dif-ferent trades into co-operatives and lobbying for policy change, have made itone of the most successful womens movements in South Asia. Other organ-izations have dealt with this problem by organizing women around theircommon needs for credit, education, legal literacy or training instead ofaround their occupations or trades. Once such efforts have financial supportand, in the best cases, policy backing, the base is created upon which morewomen can be organized and more demands pushed into broader spheres.

A serious challenge in organizing self-employed women arises from theflawed assumption that mobilization automatically creates more and betterwork. For example, agricultural labourers rendered unemployable for sev-eral months of the year due to seasonal patterns and vagaries may not benefit


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much from traditional unionizing and bargaining practices. Organizing alsocannot boost sales for artisans producing traditional crafts in a declining mar-ket. Such vulnerabilities point to the usefulness of organizing to help womengain access to reasonable alternatives. The mix of interventions most likely to

produce optimal results for such groups will be discussed in a later section ofthis article.

Organizational weaknesses

There is little point in organizing women for economic empowerment if theirorganizing structures are not strong, autonomous and sustainable in the longterm. Womens organizations in South Asia appear to be faced with three

major weaknesses. Their lack of financial sustainability, or their inability toachieve self-sufficiency through stable, multiple, interlocking sources ofincome and funding, and their inability to survive without external fundsand subsidy is the first of these weaknesses. Managerial weaknesses, char-acterized by cumbersome bureaucratic structures, administrative difficultiesand inadequate communication between administrators, members andstakeholders comprise the next major stumbling block. The inability todevelop collaboration and linkages to access markets, governments and theinfrastructural support required for their continued existence comprise the

third most prominent organizational inadequacy. Additionally, organizationsthat provide women with credit and other financial services are sometimesconstrained by the limited flexibility of their lending structures and services.I will briefly address each of these weaknesses.

Financial sustainability

Much evidence from South Asia and around the world supports the viewthat organizations that received considerable extended outside assistance,

by and large, have difficulty surviving in the long run (Dichter, 1999;Narasimhan, 1999; Rutherford, 2000). In contrast, the majority of groups thatstart with nothing but their own resources or with a sizeable investment oftheir own tend to persist and become self-supporting over time. The chal-lenge, of course, remains that poor women do not have disposable incomesto contribute towards organizing efforts and organizations seeking to repre-sent them must, initially at least, rely upon assistance from domestic andinternational governments and other donors.

Once a certain momentum has been generated, several organizations have

been very successful at working towards self-sufficiency by providing paidservices to its members and seeking out productive linkages with private andpublic sector enterprises. The crches run by SEWA, for example, are staffedby paid members and provide childcare services for a fee to its clients (SEWA,


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2002). Other organizations like AWARE (Action for Welfare and Awakeningin Rural Environments) a secular, non-political, voluntary organization serv-ing rural women in over 3000 communities in India organize women by rais-ing consciousness about their rights and legal entitlements and then step in

with economic programmes and loans that are strictly limited to matchingwhatever resources the community is able to mobilize on its own first, andthe kind of economic intervention the community itself wants (Narasimhan,1999).

Managerial sustainability

Managerial or administrative sustainability has also been identified as achallenge for many organizations (Cheston and Kuhn, 2002; Dichter, 1999;

Holcombe, 1995). Until women have the necessary exposure to new ideasand technologies, their desire and ability to assume responsibility are bigconstraints to continued operation. They have to struggle to learn adminis-trative and management skills every time a new problem comes up. Theabsence of literate women in their membership has sometimes forced orga-nizations to depend on volunteers or male community members for day-to-day management, creating new problems associated with power and access.The provision of management training and literacy skills, and the services ofyounger, highly educated and motivated women have gone a long way

towards addressing administrative issues in many non-governmental organ-izations (NGOs) and community organizations. It is increasingly evidentthat self-employed women possess strong numeric and accounting skills andlearn quickly, as long as the training provided is practical and relevant totheir occupations, life experiences and needs. SEWA, for example, now hasan entire human resource department training programme for women in co-operatives. It includes training in co-op management, legal issues, functionalliteracy, marketing and communications. By including repeated exposure tonew places and new knowledge, it has established a system for women to

learn business and co-operative skills as well as trade skills.

Collaborations

Facilitating and maintaining linkages and extension services with the privatesector and governmental infrastructure is vital for the survival of womensorganizations but this is, unfortunately, an area that many have not paidattention to (Carr et al., 1996). Some organizations have attempted to formcollaborations with very positive results. BRAC, for example, has developed

a women-owned poultry programme that is now co-administered by theGovernment of Bangladesh and receives valuable inputs (in the form ofchicks and veterinary services) and training from government departments(Carr et al., 1996; Chen, 1996).


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Lending structures

Organizations that provide women with credit face several challenges thatrelate to lending structures. The Grameen Bank pioneered the substitution ofphysical collateral with social collateral, in the form of peer pressure exertedon clients by other members of the credit circles who risk losing their lendingprivileges as a result of the default of any one of its members. The model has been declared extremely successful by the Bank and within developmentcircles because of the very high repayment rates, but it is not without unde-sirable ramifications. Research conducted by several scholars reveals that, inthe interest of protecting their line of credit and avoiding censure from othergroup members, women were occasionally forced to borrow money from thevery moneylenders from whose clutches the Grameen Bank was trying toextricate them, in order to repay their loans (Goetz and Sengupta, 1996;Rahman, 1999). Hence, organizing mechanisms that are deemed financiallyastute or logical can occasionally have effects that are contradictory to theoriginal objective of the organizing effort. Other organizations that providecredit but that are unable to accept deposits or provide savings accounts dueto their NGO status also struggle with the fact that women in many parts ofSouth Asia need safe, liquid, interest-bearing savings instruments more thanthey need credit (Dichter, 1999; Rutherford, 2000). In the absence of secureplaces in which to save their money, women all too often turn to traders,middlemen, husbands and grown-up sons for safe keeping, with verynegative consequences.

Other factors

There are other factors that organizations with good intentions have in com-mon that sometimes actually contribute to the maintenance of institutionalbarriers that hinder the entry and organization of women. Examples of suchbarriers include the following: the limited outreach of NGO programmes andtheir concentration in urban areas with high populations; the extremely

bureaucratic and complex structures of governmental programmes thatundo the potential benefits of the greater outreach of broad-based nationalprogrammes; the lack of co-operation and co-ordination between organiz-ations that promote the role of self-employed women in development inother useful ways and those that seek to organize them; the lack of cleardefinitions of target groups and the absence of trained women to serve asextension service workers.

Opportunities for organizing self-employed women

While there are still many persistent barriers to organizing women in SouthAsia, the opportunities for doing so and the reasons for persevering far


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previously disenfranchised women in both urban and rural environmentsin South Asia provides a major impetus for more organizing efforts in theregion. Unorganized workers who previously had no models of organizingto identify with or to aspire to, now find themselves motivated by the well-

publicized successes of others like themselves. Additionally, the large bodyof domestic and international literature that has documented the trials andtribulations of the early years of these organizations along with their philos-ophies, organizing strategies and portfolio of activities provides ampleknowledge for aspiring organizations to draw information and support from.

In an unorganized environment, women may be forced to behave in frac-tious, competitive and dishonest ways to meet their needs, but when theycome together with a common agenda to secure better incomes and workingconditions, there are compelling reasons for camaraderie and mutual sup-

port. Not having their relationships defined by a Pareto equilibrium, whereone person cannot be better off without making another worse off, goes along way in dispelling their sense of distrust and resentment towards oneanother and motivates them to work towards collective efforts where they allstand to gain. Also, while workers in the informal economy may be extremelypoor in terms of physical, financial and human capital, out of tradition andnecessity they tend to generate strong social capital by maintaining local net-works of aid among family and friends, which are very conducive to organ-izing. While unionizing strategies have enabled women to come together to

co-operate rather than compete with one another for jobs and to use theirincreased bargaining power in their favour, it is sometimes possible toachieve some of the same results as a group, even without being formally re-gistered as a union. There are several examples of ununionized collectives ofwomen embroiderers in Bangladesh and garment workers in India who arehaving their demands met by refusing collectively to work below a certainpiece rate.

Organizing women into collectives not only increases their economic cloutand bargaining power but also opens up other opportunities for change. Fre-

quently, womens organizations have enabled women to gain increasedaccess to new markets or to negotiate better terms in old arrangements.Handicraft and clothing co-operatives organized by Banaskantha in Gujarat,India, helped women organize to bypass exploitative middlemen and toaccess urban garment markets, thereby increasing their earnings by over300 per cent (Carr et al., 1996). Similarly, vegetable vendors and milk co-operatives were able to negotiate contracts to deliver produce and dairyproducts to public sector hotels and hospitals. Even rag pickers, traditionallyconsidered the most downtrodden and powerless members of the informal

sector, were able to organize under SEWAs guidance to negotiate contractswith government services to be the preferred recipients of the states wastepaper, which members then constructed into paper bags for sale (Rose, 1992).Similarly, potato-farmer groups in remote parts of northern Pakistan and


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basket weavers in Sri Lanka were able to access export markets through theirinvolvement with the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme and the WomensDevelopment Federation respectively (Carr et al., 1996).

Once an organization has created a unifying platform for its members and

put its finances in order, other objectives can be added to the initial agenda.Womens organizations have not only effectively provided work insuranceand basic social security services like maternity, healthcare and childcare ona premium or user-fee basis but, through their lobbying activities, they havealso won significant policy victories over governments and labour associ-ations. The most prominent examples include the struggle of the women inthe informal sector in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu to bring the Construc-tion Workers Act into existence, and the change of policies in Gujarat to pro-vide healthcare and maternity benefits to tobacco workers (Carr et al., 1996;

WWF, 2000).Providing low-cost housing for families and hostels for low-income

women is another service in which a few organizations have made a dif-ference. Organizations like the Nari Udyog Kendra in Bangladesh, whichprovides safe, affordable housing for single women working in garmentfactories and also lobbies for better and more affordable transportation forworking women, provide very valuable services in support of womens eco-nomic empowerment (Nari Udyog Kendra, 2000). Of course, such initiativescreate the inevitable debate of how much energy should be expended by

organizations in developing responsive parallel models through the womenthemselves, and in demanding appropriate responses from the public andprivate sector. Nevertheless, I believe they provide organizations withunique learning opportunities to test their ability to deliver such services andto identify useful linkages and collaborations with the other two sectors.

Finally, from a more personal but crucial perspective, organizing promiseswomen a source of affiliation and identity beyond those offered by familyand traditional kinship structures. This is especially important for womenwho have worked all their lives but have never perceived themselves as

workers with rights, entitlements and demands. Organizing offers womenthe opportunity to explore their potential and abilities as workers and asagents of change. Organized women are much more likely to lose their fearand pessimism and to gain confidence in the process of coming together insolidarity and sisterhood. As a group, they develop the potential to fightexploitation, not just at work but also at home and in society in general. Theyare able to establish relationships of mutual respect with employers and withmore advantaged sections of society who, perhaps for the first time, perceivethem as a force of their own instead of as isolated, vulnerable, powerless

women. In meetings, unionized textile workers in Ahmedabad now pull upchairs across the table from employers instead of sitting at their feet withtheir heads covered as they have done for decades; rural Bangladeshi womenfrom community organizations have abandoned purdah against the wishes


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of village elders to protest against the illegal felling of trees; Grameen Bankmembers are now frequently found on village and community-level boards;Proshika members have successfully resisted the eviction efforts of slumlordsand local gangs in Dhaka, and police in Gujarat, previously infamous for

their brutality towards peddlers, now meekly accept SEWA membershipcards and vending licenses from street vendors.

These, and many other examples, bear testimony to what organizing hasaccomplished for millions of women in South Asia and also provide a senseof what is possible in the foreseeable future. In the following pages I willattempt to categorize and critique the specific economic empowerment strat-egies that have enjoyed the most widespread support and replication.

Categorization of economic empowerment strategies

While there is some variety in the organizing principles, short-term goals andmethods of operation pursued by different groups, they seem to have a number of long-term goals in common. These include, but are not limited to:increasing income and assets; providing or generating demand for worksecurity and social security services such as health, childcare, housing, andaccess to developmental services such as training, communications and banking; building solidarity and support networks; strengthening demo-

cracy and democratic processes; mainstreaming self-employed women intothe national economy and encouraging and enabling them to become part-ners and facilitators in the process of economic development.

These objectives, in turn, appear to be pursued by one or a combination ofseveral of the following specific economic strategies: financial interventions,including credit, savings accounts and investment instruments; enterprisedevelopment, including increased access to skills, management training,technologies and production packages; information and marketing strat-egies; unionizing and bargaining for higher wages, better working condi-

tions and work security for self-employed as well as waged employees andconsciousness-raising socio-political strategies.

Financial interventions

Other than a few organizations that make political goals like legal literacyand voter education their sole agenda, almost all womens organizations inSouth Asia have a strong financial component. Micro-credit is easily the mostpopular financial intervention. The Grameen Bank has to date disbursed

more than US$2.5 billion (Yunus, 1999). SEWA Bank, the largest co-operativeunder the umbrella organization, currently has 125,000 self-employedwomen depositors and has disbursed more than US$10 million in loans(SEWA, 2002). Even organizations that were not originally motivated to


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become financial institutions have accumulated and disbursed considerableamounts of savings and loans: by 1995, BRAC and Proshika had disbursedUS$180 million and US$13 million respectively in loans to women members(Carr et al., 1996).

Issues of financial sustainability have plagued even the most successfulmicro-credit programmes. From the beginning, most organizations, includ-ing pioneers like the Grameen Bank, have been dependent on funds fromdonor countries, large multilateral and bilateral organizations such as theWorld Bank and USAID, and sometimes even from the larger NGOs. Despiteimpressive repayment rates in excess of 90 per cent in South Asia, the smallsizes of these loans, averaging about US$94, and the associated costs oflending such small amounts, render organizations ineffective at weaningthemselves off donor funding (Dichter, 1999). This has motivated many

organizations to become banks in order to create alternate sources of incomethrough savings accounts and investment instruments such as mutual fundsand guaranteed investment certificates. While this coincides very well withthe demonstrated widespread and greater need for savings than for creditamong women in the region, many organizations have resisted it, on theideological grounds of wanting to remain social, rather than financial, insti-tutions. Some have explored alternatives to deal with the issue of financialsustainability by organizing members into self-regulating rotating savingsand credit circles (ROSCAs) or by graduating their clients to banks after

allowing them initial access to credit and the opportunity to establish soundcredit ratings with some success. Organizations like the Nari Nidhi, a creditfund for poor women in the Indian state of Bihar, have an explicit long-termobjective of facilitating direct linkages between groups of poor women andformal banking institutions (Remenyi and Quinones, 2000).

While achieving financial sustainability and providing women with sav-ings instruments are both very worthy goals, I believe that organizations inSouth Asia should persevere to find innovative solutions other than the mostintuitive one of becoming full-fledged banks. Mobilizing savings and pro-

viding credit are not the same things. Lending money to poor clients withouttaking collateral puts the risk of default on the side of the NGO, while takingdeposits may actually mean transferring the risk of poor banking practices orbankruptcy to the poor. This scenario would be detrimental, if not disastrous,for both the clients and the NGO, unless it can obtain technical assistancefrom governments or donor agencies in the development of deposit insur-ance programmes.

Despite such limitations, it is difficult to ignore the fact that to be respon-sive to the needs of the poor, savings must move into a more prominent posi-

tion. Some NGOs have figured out innovative ways to meet this need. TheCo-Operative Development Fund (CDF) in Andhra Pradesh, India is a smallNGO that reaches 25,000 clients indirectly through the farmers co-operativesthat it assists. The co-operatives focus on organizing and empowering


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women through thrift, in the form of savings, and credit groups (Carr et al.,1996). The ultimate goal of CDFs work is the self-sufficiency of the co-operatives and the organization currently takes almost no donor money. CDFis also involved in co-operative advocacy both within and beyond its home

state. It was recently engaged in a major effort to change co-operative lawboth at state and central government levels. The primary purpose was to freethe co-op sector from excessive government control and interference and tomake the laws relating to co-ops enabling, rather than controlling, instru-ments. An act to this effect was created in response to CDFs advocacy and ithas restored member control of co-operatives and allowed informal organ-izations, such as CDFs thrift and credit groups, to register as formal co-ops.The NGO hopes that other groups outside the CDF umbrella will ultimatelyfollow their example to register a state-level federation of womens thrift

co-ops.In general, co-operative movements have been important for the self-

employed because they serve the dual purpose of struggling for better work-ing conditions and developing alternative economic systems by allowing theworkers themselves to control their means of production in an environmentwhere there are no employers and employees in the conservative sense, butwhere they all own what they produce. Co-operatives are powerful economicinterventions, especially when combined with a formal or informal unioniz-ing component. If the co-operative is in the same trade and among the same

set of workers as the union, the co-op can set a standard and provide a modelof higher wages and earnings. This allows the union to demonstrate to theemployers or traders that a higher wage or better working terms are possibleand affordable. It also provides workers with a bargaining and lobbying toolfor policy change. SEWA has used these strategies extensively with its vari-ous co-ops and its current national membership stands at close to half a mil-lion women (SEWA, 2002). Co-operatives also make good business sense inSouth Asia, because they are entitled to financial and policy support fromgovernments. Weavers co-ops, for example, qualify for equipment subsidies,

loans and certain quotas of raw materials, for rebates to customers onfinished goods and for administrative support for the initial years of theco-operatives operation.

Access to finances is usually a necessary condition for womens involve-ment in economic activities but it is rarely a sufficient one. Women face otherconstraints such as the saturation of markets, competition, the inability to dif-ferentiate ones product from those sold by competitors, the lack of informa-tion and pricing uncertainties arising from credits widespread assumptionthat the poor, who are engaged in some kind of economic activity, already

know what they need to know about business and lack only capital. In reality,this is not always the case for all sections of the poor, and those who startedout from relatively stronger positions are also generally those who aremost likely to benefit from access to credit. While most borrowers are usually


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rational and respond to market forces in the manner that they deem mostappropriate, many are often not fully informed about the consequences andrepercussions of their actions, or those of the networks and institutionsthrough which they operate. Such limitations have motivated many organi-

zations to explore enterprise development through the provision of trainingand technologies as a platform for organizing women.

Enterprise development

Many organizations in South Asia have taken on the responsibility of pro-viding poor people with the information and skills to choose viable activitiesand occupations and to access the necessary backward and forward linkages,including the care and maintenance of their assets, raw materials supplies,

markets and insurance. Some of these initiatives are very innovative and sen-sitive to womens particular needs. For example, the Aga Khan Rural Sup-port Programme (AKRSP) in Northern Pakistan provides both subsistenceand graduated packages so that women can start off by improving their exist-ing subsistence-level household activities and graduate on to commercialproduction (Carr et al., 1996). After experiencing difficulty with collectiveproduction packages, the NGO adapted its programme to womens prefer-ences by introducing individual packages.

Furthermore, the AKRSP adopted the dynamic strategy of training women

from the communities to provide advice, guidance, training and inputs toother women as master trainers. This is especially important and useful inremote areas and where seclusion norms of purdah are prevalent, limitingwomens mobility and their contact with men. AWARE uses a similar strat-egy to train community leaders who, in turn, not only share their awarenessand mobilize other women in their communities but also prepare others asleaders in their own right (Narasimhan, 1999). I have commented uponSEWA and BRACs imaginative enterprise development activities severaltimes in this article. Both organizations are moving from credit and service

delivery towards integrated development packages for women due to theirwide range of well-developed sub-sector programmes and productive col-laborations. SEWA has organized skill training for its members throughnumerous channels: government extension, the Labour Department, volun-tary agencies, vocational schools, village council training institutes, univer-sities, industrial boards, co-op unions, handicraft boards, and their ownskilled artisans (SEWA, 2002).

Self-employed women generally have very specific needs for training thathave to relate directly to their daily problems of work and survival. This

explains why the skills training provided by organizations like SEWA andBRAC are more popular than standard literacy programmes. Women alsohave to be compensated financially during training for the work they aremissing, or they may not be able to afford to attend. Since most women who


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undergo training are not literate, the development of interesting trainingtools like audio-visual media is important.

In addition to training, some organizations also directly provide jobs. TheBRAC handloom and embroidery production centres, for instance, directly

employ over 2000 women and provide attractive working conditions in a safeand non-exploitative environment (Carr et al., 1996). Other organizations cre-ate jobs for women by training them to provide services to other women intheir communities. These include the paraprofessionals in a variety oforganizations: barefoot accountants and master trainers in AKRSP; barefootdoctors, teachers, lawyers and vets in AWARE and BRAC. Although it is thecommunity receiving the service that pays the wages of these workers, it isthe NGO that trains and prepares them to take on these responsibilities.

It has been argued in the context of both government and non-government

programmes that credit may not be an appropriate intervention for the verypoorest, whose raw labour is the only asset at their disposal (Kabeer, 1996).This is the group that is fearful of institutions and of being indebted, and theyare likely to lack the necessary resources to transform loans into viable eco-nomic activities. For some within this group, programmes of employmentgeneration are likely to have a greater potential to meet their needs. Employ-ment schemes linked to enterprise development infrastructure may help tomake credit interventions more useful for a wider section of the poorestpeople, and organizations experienced in grassroots mobilization can be

effective in bringing people who currently do not have the skills and knowl-edge to use credit effectively into the entrepreneurship fold. They can alsoplay a variety of very important roles, including preparing people to becomegood borrowers and savers, helping people to manage their own financesor their financial groups, and enabling people to put the social and culturalcapital they have to better use. While such activities are less likely to befinancially sustainable than other interventions, I believe they are worthexploring because of the sheer number of people who lack the opportunityto learn about self-employment and currently live in poverty due to their

dependence on seasonal or other forms of precarious employment.

Market strategies

Programmes that promote womens self-employment often tend to giveinadequate attention to market trends and to the marketability of the prod-ucts. Market constraints are usually of two types. There may be no realdemand for the product because the market is saturated. Alternately, theremay be a demand for the product but poor entrepreneurs may not be able to

sell it, because of inadequate access to markets or lack of information aboutwhere the markets are.

Several organizations in South Asia have attempted to find solutionsto these problems. In the case of flooded markets, BRAC, AKRSP and


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Proshika have assisted women in shifting from traditional activities, whichhave few or no barriers to entry, into non-traditional activities whichdemand improved technical skills and increased amounts of capital, butprovide higher returns due to greater market demand. Sericulture, tailor-

ing, carpentry, auto-repair, weaving and brickmaking are a few examples(Carr et al., 1996). In many cases, larger organizations have the capacity forinternal technology development, which is used to provide appropriatetechnologies to help diversify and upgrade the range of enterprises open towomen. Some have also developed effective strategies to deal with marketinformation and access. The Womens Development Fund in Sri Lanka hasestablished a market information service that its members can use to findand connect with potential buyers (Carr et al., 1996). The AKRSP has linkedits womens organizations with merchant marketing co-operatives and

truck drivers to facilitate timely access to markets for their perishable foodproducts. The marketing strategies of the SEWA co-operatives are so suc-cessful that the organization now runs training sessions for other smallerco-operatives.

Unionizing

The benefits of unionizing and collective bargaining have been outlined inother parts of the article. A few of the disadvantages have as well. The most

successful unionizing processes take place at three different levels. At thegrassroots level, women unionize to struggle against their direct exploiterslike contractors or extorting policemen; at the next level, they struggleagainst an ineffective or indifferent labour enforcement bureaucracy andlegal system and at the third level, against unfavourable or absent national orinternational laws and policies. While this process may seem incremental orlinear, organizations that use unionizing principles like SEWA and WWF arequick to point out that, in reality, the union inevitably finds itself strugglingconcurrently not just against individual contractors or manufacturers but

also against the policies of an industry or trade as a whole.While several unions have been effective at bringing public visibility to the

exploitation of women and pushing for policy change, it is important to stressthat conventional union-style work can be unsuccessful and even damagingin some circumstances. A prominent case is that of rural agricultural work,where women outnumber men but where rigid caste, feudal and gender hier-archies combined with the sheer lack of other employment opportunities ren-der them extremely vulnerable to exploitation. Women face problems of lowwages, the non-payment of wages and extremely long hours during trans-

planting and harvesting seasons, followed by the uncertainty of work for theremaining eight months of the year. While employers may verbally agree topay minimum wages upon demand, SEWA organizers found that it was easyfor them to terrorize women and hire, or threaten to hire, outside labour.


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While this situation presents itself frequently even in urban environments,it is especially damaging in rural environments where agriculture is themainstay and where there are many more willing workers than jobs. A goodstrategy for rural areas may be to enhance combinations of agriculture, ar-

tisan, livestock and ecological regeneration occupations, combined with linksto credit and appropriate technology. Large numbers of skilled artisans whofall into agricultural or manual labour due to losing the means of productionor their inability to afford raw materials, could benefit from such a strategy.In addition to rural weavers, SEWA has successfully tried this approachwith urban tailors, displaced artisans, dairy producers and processed foodvendors.

One of the biggest contributions of the womens union movement in SouthAsia appears to be the empowerment of poor women by induction into the

legal process, since exclusion from the legal system is one of the ways thatsociety maintains its codes and strata. The significant legal victory won bystreet vendors, for example, in the recognition by the Supreme Court of Indiaof their right to vend and to a just licensing policy as a fundamental humanright under the Constitution of India, have afforded women in the informaleconomy the first taste of what it is like to have the force of law and the qual-ities of an organized society working for them. While the continuum betweenemployment and social services have always been evident to the womenworkers themselves, the unionizing and bargaining struggles have contrib-

uted significantly towards demonstrating the link between the two and dis-pelling the long-held myth that they are separate issues. The victories won byconstruction-worker and tobacco-worker collectives in securing basic socialsecurity services from their employers are good examples. In addition to put-ting pressure on the state to change planning decisions, financial institutionsand laws, unions also act as effective watchdogs, ensuring that the existingmachinery actually works for poor and underprivileged women.

It is important to stress that there is no simple one-size-fits-all unionizingformula to follow, given that agricultural, industrial and other sectors in the

regions of South Asia are growing at widely varying rates. Different regions,states and occupations have to work out their own strategies for employmentmaximization and collective bargaining, with the understanding and con-fidence that women can organize, plan, pressure and act together almostanywhere.

Social and political strategies

The interventions described previously perceive womens economicempowerment as an entry point for their overall empowerment within thefamily and within larger social and political spheres. While the logic behindthis appears sound, it has also been demonstrated that there is a need in South


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Asia to address other socio-political sources of womens disempowermentand subordination. Womens organizations have pursued different strategiesto address such constraints. I have described AWAREs strategy of conscien-tization followed by economic support in a previous section. Although the

strategy begins with motivation and then moves on to economic develop-ment, there is also a third stage, which is seen as an equally important com-ponent of the organizations strategy: that of withdrawing from a communityonce a self-sustaining momentum for initiating change has been generated.

Avoiding a dependency syndrome is a major aspect of the AWARE strat-egy. The first batch of 150 villages became independent in 1985 and the sec-ond in 1987. The organization has so far withdrawn in this manner from 2620villages across India where the community has been empowered with theconfidence and the ability to tackle problems on its own (Narasimhan, 1999).

The fact that AWARE is able to withdraw from a village once awareness hasbeen generated in sufficient measure itself shows that it is not so much thematerial input that is the decisive factor in an appropriate strategy, as the psy-chological priming for community empowerment. Although the measure-ment of empowerment continues to be a debated topic, a number of studiesbased on participant observation and interviews have revealed that womenwho have been exposed to the awareness-generation strategy fare signific-antly better than women who have not (Carr et al., 1996; Kabeer, 1997; Razavi,1999). This includes the most widely accepted areas of empowerment such as

income, education, healthcare, status, access to and ownership of assets andresources and autonomy and assertiveness.

The emphasis on psychological empowerment, rather than on immediateincome generation, differentiates the AWARE strategy from other conven-tional approaches. The sense of solidarity and camaraderie generated amongthe women has also enabled them to seek solutions to domestic and socialissues in the community. Emphasizing psychological empowerment, aware-ness generation, information sharing and motivation, and bolstering thiswith modest economic assistance, appears to effect changes that other inter-

ventions cannot bring about by themselves. Nijera Kori, an NGO founded bydevelopment activists in Bangladesh who were previously part of BRAC,does not distribute material resources to poor women but seeks instead tobuild their organizational capacity to enable them to press claims on publicinstitutions (Kabeer, 1994). The NGO reasons that while there is state com-mitment to providing various material resources to the poor, from the redis-tribution of unclaimed, publicly owned land to the provision of employmentthrough government work schemes, what prevents disenfranchised peoplefrom claiming their just entitlement is their lack of political clout.

In terms of economic resources, priority is given to the mobilization of thecommunities own resources and includes joint cultivation (that is, cultiva-tion on plots that are co-operatively leased or owned) and aquaculture,supported by group savings. The Womens Development Programme in


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Rajasthan, India, also focuses less on putting new mechanisms of delivery inplace and more on building alliances and networks that would enable poorerrural women to put collective pressure on unresponsive local institutions(Kabeer, 1994). Both organizations report that women in their projects went

on to bond together to fight domestic violence, child marriages, the dowryand the ostracism of widows. They also took a lead in community initiativesfor developmental work in water supply, agriculture and healthcare.

A major set of socio-political constraints arise from patriarchal land rightsand property laws that deny, or allow for smaller shares of land and propertyto daughters, wives and widows. Many organizations have lobbied consist-ently for changes in the property law or for the implementation of constitu-tional amendments but SEWA, for example, continues to identify gettingland registered in womens names as one of its major current challenges

(Jhabvala, 2002, private communication). When women in the Indian state ofAndhra Pradesh discovered that they could not join co-operatives because oftheir lack of land rights, CDF worked around the issue by setting up specialthrift and credit societies that had no such requirements. While its possiblefor well-intentioned organizations to figure out such loopholes, the challengeremains that unless institutionalized forms of discrimination against womenare eliminated, opportunities offered in lieu of such rights may merely beprolonging the status quo.

Deeply entrenched social and religious mores and customs make it espe-

cially difficult to challenge such practices, since women themselves mayacquiesce or openly support them out of fear of losing social approval orangering men in their families and communities. The regional experiences ofdifferent organizations in South Asia suggest that it is better to bring meninto the discussions and debates instead of marginalizing and antagonizingthem. By boosting womens incomes through group activities and concur-rently educating men about the importance of womens asset ownership in anon-threatening environment, organizations like the AKRSP, CDF and SEWAhave managed to secure property-sharing, land and housing titles for women

in a significant number of cases (Gujarat Mahila Housing SEWA Trust, 2001;Mehta, 1996; Unni, 1999).

Conclusion

The primary objective of this article was to explore the major challenges andopportunities of organizing women in the informal economy in South Asia.The most prominent factors that impede the ability of South Asian women to

organize were identified as follows: womens weak starting positions andtheir lack of bargaining power, borne out a pervasive sense of fear and help-lessness; the strong opposition and even violent repression from thosefactions most likely to lose power as a result of womens solidarity; their


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organizational weaknesses of financial and managerial instability; theirinability to form productive linkages and collaborations with the public andprivate sector; the controversial lending structures of credit organizationswhere physical collateral is substituted with peer pressure tactics that are

sometimes oppressive and counterproductive; the limited outreach of NGOs;the tedious bureaucratic structures of government programmes; the lack of aclear definition of target groups and the shortage of trained extension work-ers. The survival and growth of the informal sector, despite predictions ofits demise in the face of rapid industrialization, was identified as the mostbasic and compelling reason for the organization and mobilization of self-employed women. Other opportunities were identified as follows: the poten-tial of combining resources for the group ownership of the assets and meansof production; the creation of a forum in which women can co-operate rather

than compete for jobs; accessing new markets, associations and subsidies; thepotential to demand work insurance and social protection and the inspirationand support of new sources of affiliation and solidarity.

The final section of the article provided a categorization and a critical ana-lysis of the most widely known strategies aimed at organizing self-employedwomen in South Asia. Financial interventions, including credit, savingsaccounts and investment instruments were easily the most popular althoughthe organizations providing them continued to struggle with issues of finan-cial viability, outreach and the moral dilemma of whether to remain social

institutions or to convert to banks in the interest of sustainability.Although some organizations have introduced innovative strategies and

tools to perpetuate themselves and to serve their constituencies better, a thor-ough study of such programmes points to the need for more imaginative andproactive financial interventions. Enterprise development is one of the strat-egies that grew out of the failure of credit to ensure the success of womenseconomic activities. Several organizations have developed participatoryapproaches and packages that start where the women themselves are, andwith their own priorities in mind. They focus primarily on bringing women

into the economic mainstream by broadening their options and therebyincreasing their likelihood of success and reducing their dependence on out-side sources of support.

There has also been a trend toward creating employment opportunities forwomen by training them to provide important services to other women. Themaster trainers of the AKRSP, the barefoot doctors, vets and lawyers ofBRAC, the literacy workers of Proshika and the health and childcare pro-viders of SEWA are very good examples. The numbers of organizationsworking on market strategies to promote womens enterprises have also

grown significantly in recent years. While some have very successfully foundsolutions to the problems of the declining demand of some products, as wellas the market saturation of others, there is ample room for the inductionof women into more non-traditional but lucrative enterprises. Unionizing


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strategies have enjoyed much success in parts of South Asia and limited suc-cess in others.

The least successful efforts were generally in areas where low wages andworking conditions were the result of sheer lack of employment opportun-

ities. In such cases, the joint strategy of unionization and formation of co-operatives or other reasonable alternatives is especially effective. In additionto raising the visibility of informal sector workers, the biggest contributionsof the womens unions in South Asia were the successful induction of womeninto the legal and labour machinery of states and countries; the demonstra-tion of the link between employment and social services and successfullobbying to influence policy and regulation at the grassroots, national andinternational levels.

Many organizations have stressed the importance of social and political

strategies to help women rise out of their subordinated positions in the fam-ily and society. In some cases they have demonstrated that psychologicalpriming is more important, or at least as important, as material input forwomens overall empowerment. Overcoming deeply rooted male biases inland and property rights stands out as one of the most pressing priorities forsuch organizations, together with calls for advocacy activities that demandthe formulation and implementation of policies at the national level that spe-cifically accommodate the needs of women in the informal sector and recog-nize their role and rights as primary agents in land and landed property

ownership.

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