How Wotr is Working Towards Women Empowerment in Rural Areas
Rural India has had a constant problem with unemployment and poverty. Roughly 280 million people in rural India live in poverty owing to their over-dependence on agriculture as a source of income. Agriculture being extremely vulnerable to climate change and the degrading ecosystem is not a reliable source of income. The constant problem of unemployment and poverty has pushed this segment of population into a vicious cycle wherein due to a lack of income they can’t invest in education or upskilling themselves, which leads them to being stuck with traditional businesses and traditional ways of practicing agriculture, which brings them back to the problem of poverty. To add on to this, rural India faces a problem of a rigid mindset and pre-defined gender roles. Traditionally women were required to do household chores, raise children, etc but with modernisation the role of women is shifting from a primary caregiver to someone who can contribute towards the economy and be financially independent. While there is a shift towards this thought process in urban parts of the country, rural India still views women as primary caregivers. Almost all households have entrusted women with the responsibility of domestic work like cooking, cleaning, raising children, and taking care of the elderly. Roughly 48% of the population of rural India is female. The pre-defined gender roles have rendered so many women who can potentially contribute economically, useless both to their family needs and themselves. Herein, enters ngo for women empowerment, some of them have been working tirelessly in the rural areas to educate people about this fact.
Even if women are employed they tend to get much lower wages than men, of the 85% who work in agriculture only 13 percent have land ownership rights. Rural women rarely possess ownership rights to their property or finances. One of the main problems faced by rural women is financial literacy. Which is one of the main reasons why they are left highly vulnerable in crisis situations. Rural women are unable or face considerable difficulty in getting new settlement plots, or claim post-disaster benefits etc. When it comes to education women rarely have any access to education in comparison to rural men, as they are usually seen as caregivers. This is why most of the economically active women (that is about 80% of the economically active women) are working in agriculture, with most of them taking up labor intensive activities which includes helping in land preparation, sowing, weeding, harvesting and post harvesting tasks such as cleaning, storage of produce, etc. WOTR, an NGO for women empowerment, believes that given the right opportunity and education women can contribute much more to the economy and can do much more ‘economically productive’ work. Further, we realize that economic disability and dependency on male members for income is just one front of several challenges that rural women face, which is why we also want to help women address other challenges such as women safety, menstrual health education, skill building, education,etc. The main aim of WOTR is women empowerment of women in rural areas which includes incorporating the viewpoint of women in decision making, ensuring women have equal access to terms of education, Health, jobs, etc and consequently enable them to become independent. Which is why WOTR has been trying to help rural women overcome all these challenges through various initiatives.
HERE ARE 3 INITIATIVES BY WOTR THAT WORK TOWARDS WOMEN EMPOWERMENT Collective Marketing of Lemon: The aim of this activity was to help in the income enhancement of Self Help Groups in tribal areas by the ngo for women empowerment. During a field visit in a village in the Rayagada district in Odisha an official observed that a huge quantity of lemon was lying beneath trees and being wasted. So, the official came up with an idea to market that product which could provide tribal families with an extra source of income. WOTR convinced and worked with a self help group named “Maa Belankini SHG” to market and sell that product. You can read more about this here. Menstrual Health Awareness: Quality and disposal are one of the main challenges of sanitary pads, as per a study by WaterAid India conducted in 2018, India generates roughly 113 tonnes of menstrual waste annually because of improper disposal, further many sanitary pads contain Dioxins which can potentially cause pelvic inflammatory disease, ovarian cancer, impaired
fertility and diabetes. In order to address this Livinguard, a Switzerland-based microbiology and material sciences company created Saafkins. Saafkins are the latest technology sanitary pads which are made to be hygienic, comfortable and reusable. WOTR took up the responsibility to promote Saafkins and encourage women to use them. WOTR started a Hygiene for Five days for a month (#Hyfive) project for rural women. The aim of this project was to promote Saafkins as a cheap and healthy alternative to the pads they were using currently. These pads cost just Rs. 150 per packet and one packet can last for a whole year. You can read more about this in detail here. Creating Employment Opportunity: WOTR, ngo for women empowerment, works tirelessly in rural and tribal areas and tries to empower women by educating them and creating job opportunities for them. WOTR has helped over 125000 women. As a part of their ‘break the bias’ theme they shared inspiring stories of the women they helped become economically Independent and break the stereotype. Read about them in detail here.