2. women empowerment and economic development

American Academy of Political and Social Science

Women, Empowerment, and Economic DevelopmentAuthor(s): Rekha MehraSource: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 554, The Role ofNGOs: Charity and Empowerment (Nov., 1997), pp. 136-149Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. in association with the American Academy of Politicaland Social ScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1049571Accessed: 31/01/2010 22:43

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ANNALS, AAPSS, 554, November 1997

Women, Empowerment, and Economic Development

By REKHA MEHRA

ABSTRACT: Development policies and programs tend not to view women as integral to the economic development process. This is reflected in the higher investments in women's reproductive rather than their productive roles, mainly in population programs. Yet women throughout the developing world engage in economically productive work and earn incomes. They work primarily in agriculture and in the informal sector and, increasingly, in formal wage employment. Their earnings, however, are generally low. Since the 1950s, development agencies have responded to the need for poor women to earn incomes by making relatively small investments in

income-generating projects. Often such projects fail because they are motivated by welfare and not development concerns, offering women temporary and part-time employment in traditionally feminine skills such as knitting and sewing that have limited markets. By contrast, over the past twenty years, some nongovernmental organizations, such as the Self-Employed Women's Association in India, have been effective in improving women's economic status because they have started with the premise that women are fundamental to the process of economic development.

Rekha Mehra is acting vice president and director of economic analysis at the International Center for Research on Women in Washington, D.C., where she conducts research on and provides technical assistance concerning women and their involvement with development, agriculture, employment, credit, property rights, irrigation, and the environment. Previously, she was a policy associate at Resources for the Future and a lecturer in history at St. Stephens College, Delhi, India. She has doctoral degrees in food and resource economics and U.S. history from the University of Florida.

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WOMEN, EMPOWERMENT, AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

VER the past two decades, development policy has become in-

creasingly people centered. Although poverty concerns have long been on the development agenda, the imple- mentation of development policies has not always directly addressed poverty alleviation. More recently, along with macroeconomic reform and growth, there has been growing recognition of the need to address basic human needs and to adopt more participatory approaches to achieve development goals. These changes have been both the stimulus for and the result of the growth and development of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that work directly at the grassroots level with low-income people like small-scale farmers and micro-entrepreneurs. Governments and donors have begun to rely increasingly on NGOs in developed and developing countries as partners in the development process. Many NGOs have demonstrated an interest not only in improving people's economic status and well-being but also in empowering the people themselves to obtain improvements in their lives.

Promoting empowerment is of particular interest to some NGOs working with poor women. Although four decades of development (1950-90) have yielded important benefits to women, significant gender gaps still remain. Improvements in women's well-being are reflected in the behav- ior of four key indicators between 1970 and 1990, as shown in Table 1: (1) life expectancy among women increased significantly in all regions; (2) girls' enrollment in primary school

increased in most regions; (3) total fertility rates declined; and (4) women's access to contraception increased. On the other hand, worldwide, twice as many women as men are still illiterate; girls represent the majority of the 130 million children without access to primary school; and almost twice as many women as men suffer from iron-deficiency anemia.'

The most telling statistic reflect- ing gender bias is the low ratios of females to males (94 females for every 100 males) in China and South and West Asia due to son preference. This contradicts the biological pat- tern, where the ratio favors females. The preference for sons manifests itself through the neglect of female children, selective abortion, and female infanticide and has prompted researchers to attempt to estimate the number of"missing girls." Amar- tya K. Sen estimates that 4 million girls are missing in India alone, while globally the estimate is more than 100 million women.2 Further, recent estimates show that male preference is not, as one would expect, tapering with economic development. Instead, in the 1980s, 1 million more girls were lost in India due to neglect and infanticide.3

1. United Nations Development Pro-

gramme, Human Development Report 1995 (New York: United Nations, 1995).

2. Amartya Sen, "Women's Survival as a

Development Problem" (Talk given at the 1700th stated meeting of the American Acad-

emy of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 8 Mar. 1989).

3. Rick Weiss, "Anti-Girl Bias Rises in

Asia, Studies Show," Washington Post, 11 May 1996.

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THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

TABLE 1 FOUR KEY INDICATORS OF WOMEN'S SOCIAL STATUS

Females as Percentage of Percentage of Women (ages

Life Expectancy Total Enrollment 15-49) Using at Birth Fertility in Primary School Modern Contraception*

Region 1970 1990 1970 1990 1970 1990 1980 1990

East Asia 64.5 75.2 4.65 2.48 48 48 65.8 81.1 Southeast Asia and Oceania 57.2 66.4 5.35 3.86 47 48 44.2 53.5

South Asia 48.3 58.0 6.29 5.29 36 41 21.5 35.9 Latin America and the Caribbean 64.0 71.5 5.00 3.27 49 49 39.3 44.9

Sub-Saharan Africa 46.7 53.1 6.52 6.17 39 44 15.3 24.7

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 75.4 79.8 2.25 1.75 49 49 70.0 74.3

Arab states 58.0 68.8 6.83 5.02 36 44 24.2 44.7

SOURCE: WISTAT Database (version 3) (United Nations). *The regional average is based on countries' averages.

EMPOWERMENT, CAPABILITIES, AND OPPORTUNITIES

These data demonstrate the need for development policies and programs that can enable girls and women to challenge current norms and change conditions-a process that can be termed "empowerment." Definitions of empowerment vary greatly. Therefore, empowerment must be quantified and measured de- pending on the particular context. In the context of women and development, the definition of empowerment should include the expansion of choices for women and an increase in women's ability to exercise choice.4 For example, improvements in women's access to economic opportu-

4. United Nations Development Pro- gramme, Human Development Report 1995.

nities such as credit and employment expand choices, while health services and education improve women's capabilities to take advantage of those choices.

The two elements of this definition of empowerment are interrelated, but the correspondence between them may not be, and often is not, exact. Interventions that expand women's choices, for instance, by in- creasing women's access to employment should raise women's ability to exercise choices (for example, to de- cide when to marry or to have children). Actions that attempt to strengthen women's capacity to choose can amplify their choices. For example, schooling for girls should both increase their voice in the family and the range of job options open to them. However, for a multitude of

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FIGURE 1 FEMALE ECONOMIC ACTIVITY RATES AS A PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL FEMALE POPULATION

Est Asia OECD Southeast Sub- Latin South Aab Asia and Saharn America Asia State Oceania Afica d the

Canibbean

Regions

SOURCE: WISTAT Database (version 3) (United Nations).

underlying social, cultural, and institutional reasons, there are often varying degrees of choices for women and varying degrees of ability to exercise those choices. Also, the ability of policymakers and of women themselves to influence and change the factors underlying their disempower- ment varies.

Empirical data show that it has been relatively easier to expand women's capabilities than their opportunities. Table 1 shows that con- siderable progress has been made in improving women's capabilities-in building their human capital through improvements in access to primary education and better health care. There has been much slower progress in enhancing women's choices, however, particularly access to economic opportunities. Just over one-third of women are economically active worldwide. As Figure 1 shows, even in countries with high economic par-

ticipation rates such as those in East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, less than half of the women are economically active. In South Asia and sub- Saharan Africa, moreover, economic activity rates among women have ac- tually declined. In India, women as a proportion of the economically active population fell from almost 25 percent in 1970 to nearly 20 percent in 1990.5 The gender gap in economic activity rates is also large and, globally among women who are employed, wages are about two-thirds those of men. There are similar lags in women's political participation. Women hold just 10 percent of the seats in legislative bodies in developing countries, and only 5 percent of cabinet seats are held by women.6

5. WISTAT Database (version 3) (United Nations).

6. United Nations Development Pro- gramme, Human Development Report 1995.

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DEVELOPMENT POLICIES AND THE WELFARE MODEL

This uneven progress in women's well-being reflects the emphasis of development policies that, histori- cally, focused on women's reproductive roles, mainly on fertility reduction. Policies and investments also emphasized improvements in women's health and education. Inter- estingly, investments in women's health and education were often ra- tionalized in terms of their impact on lowering birth rates and on improving the well-being of children. Sel- dom were they justified in terms of their intrinsic importance to women's well-being. Seldom were they justified in terms of improving women's human capital so women might expand their ability to exercise choices. Also, women's economic roles were simply not acknowledged.

This emphasis on women's reproductive role is reflected in patterns of donor and national government fund- ing that have emphasized, on the one hand, fertility reduction, primarily through women-centered contracep- tive technologies and approaches, and, on the other, the promotion of women's welfare through improved health and education. In general, over the past fifty years, donor investments in population programs and family planning have far ex- ceeded those in women's productive roles. This is starkly reflected in the budget allocations of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the main vehicle for the United States' bilateral foreign assistance programs. Over the past five years, investments in this agency's population

programs have averaged $440 million as compared with $5-10 million for women-in-development programs.7

In 1970, Ester Boserup became the first to empirically demonstrate the extensive roles that women traditionally played in agricultural production throughout the developing world, particularly in Africa. She also showed that colonial administrations in Africa had introduced cash crops and modern agricultural technologies to men and not to women. As a result, men ended up working in the more modernized and productive ex- port-oriented subsector of cash crops while women were left behind in the traditional low-yielding production of food crops.8 The First International Conference on Women in Mexico in 1975 publicized the theme, and attention was drawn to the fact that development policies had ignored women's economic roles and that women were effectively being left out of the development process. Addi- tional studies in the 1970s and 1980s also demonstrated the neglect of women in development.9

It was not that governments, donors, and NGOs did not recognize the

7. U.S., General Accounting Office, For- eign Assistance: U.S. Has Made Slow Progress in Involving Women in Development (Washing- ton, DC: General Accounting Office, 1993).

8. Ester Boserup, Woman's Role in Eco- nomic Development (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1970).

9. Rekha Mehra, "Raising Agricultural Productivity: The Role of Women Farmers," in Agricultural Competitiveness: Market Forces and Policy Choice, ed. G. H. Peters and D. D. Hedley (Brookfield, VT: Dartmouth, 1995), p. 395; Kathleen Staudt, "Women Farmers and Inequalities in Agricultural Services," in Women and Work in Africa, ed. E. Bay (Boul- der, CO: Westview Press, 1982).

140


need for poor women to earn income. Often, the staff of programs targeted to poor women were quickly made aware by women themselves that their most immediate and pressing need was for improved access to income.10 However, assuming that women were not responsible for the economic support of their households, program staff interpreted women's need for income as temporary and supplementary. Nor did they make a connection between women's economic needs and ongoing development programs. Rather, they dealt with the issue of women's economic need as a discrete problem re- quiring particular interventions independent of national development programs. Thus income-generation and production projects for women often ended up pursuing welfare rather than development goals, an outcome that Mayra Buvini6 termed "project misbehavior."1

Examples of project misbehavior abound. Buvini6 documents the expe- rience of a large, integrated, rural development scheme in Bolivia fi- nanced by an international donor agency and implemented by the government.l2 An important goal was to increase alpaca and llama wool production by modernizing the herd management and shearing practices of highland peasants. When project

10. Michael Paolisso and Ellen Weiss, "In- cluding Women in Natural Resource Manage- ment," in Taking Women into Account: Lessons Learned from NGO Experiences, ed. Rekha Mehra (Washington, DC: International Center for Research on Women, 1996).

11. Mayra Buvini6, "Projects for Women in the Third World: Explaining Their Misbehav- ior," World Development, 14(5):653-64 (1986).

12. Ibid.

designers discovered that herding and shearing were women's work, the project was redesigned to include a women's production component. Im- plementation of this component, however, was assigned to a government social welfare agency rather than the Ministry of Agriculture. Staff of the welfare agency reoriented the project, and, instead of training women in improved herding and shearing, they provided them training in home skills such as cooking, knitting, and embroidery. Women thus received welfare-oriented rather than production-oriented training based on preconceived no- tions about women's tasks. Numer- ous studies have documented the redirection of projects for women to welfare-oriented goals.

Many women's NGOs and other NGOs working with women also adopted a welfare approach even though many had a long history of providing assistance to poor women and of implementing income- generating projects. Many leading women's NGOs in developing countries were founded in the 1920s to

fight for women's suffrage and legal rights and to promote women's welfare. In the 1950s when relief (or "charity") and economic growth were the two main development approaches, women's NGOs were en- listed to provide relief assistance. Following the Mexico City conference on women, which emphasized the importance of integrating women into development programs, the same women's NGOs were sought out by governments and donor agencies to

respond to the concerns articulated there and to implement women-

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specific projects. These institutions brought with them the legacy of charity, relief, and "welfarism" from the 1950s that proved difficult to overcome.13

In the relief-based framework, little attention was paid to the long- term sustainability of income-generating projects for women. NGOs offered women the opportunity to produce goods that relied on traditionally feminine skills for the home such as sewing, knitting, and crafts. Sometimes, they also offered credit and training. Assuming that women did not traditionally engage in economically productive work, the projects did not take into account women's previous work and skills in farming, petty trading, services, or other activities. Neither did they take account of whether the goods produced in the projects could be marketed and whether the skills women were offered would help them obtain jobs after the project ended. Often, income-generating projects depleted the financial resources invested in them, the losses being justified on social grounds, namely, that they were meeting welfare and relief objectives by providing employment or other benefits.

In general, the welfare model of development, employed by governments, donors, and NGOs, regards women as recipients of benefits such as health care, literacy, social ser-

13. Mayra Buvini6, "A Retrospective Look at Women's Issues in Development Coopera- tion: The Past as Prologue" (Briefing paper prepared for the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report 1995, International Center for Research on Women, 1994).

vices, and family planning rather than as independent economic actors in their own right. Because women's roles as mothers and wives have dominated development thinking, development planners and policymakers have missed important opportunities for having a significant impact on the lives of poor women. Valuable resources have been misal- located and misspent. Very little has been invested in women's productive lives, where the opportunities truly lie for reducing poverty and improving women's lives.

WHY WOMEN NEED DEVELOPMENT

Women are disproportionately represented among the poor, and the number of women in poverty in the rural areas of developing countries is growing faster than the number of men (see Figure 2). In 1988, an estimated 564 million rural women lived below the poverty line, representing an increase of 47 percent since 1965- 1970. In comparison, the number of men living below the poverty line increased 30 percent over the same pe- riod. Factors contributing to the increase in rural poverty are economic recession, civil strife, and natural disasters. In addition, the rise in the number of households supported solely by women is an important vari- able explaining the increase in poverty among women. Figure 3 shows recent statistics on the percentage of households headed by women. These households tend to be overrepre- sented among the poor.

In both the urban and rural areas of developing countries, women are important contributors to the eco-

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FIGURE 2 CHANGES IN NUMBER OF RURAL PEOPLE LIVING

BELOW THE POVERTY LINE, BY SEX, 1965-88

Millions

1965-70

- 1988

1000

800

600

400

200

0

Total women Men

SOURCE: Idriss Jazairy, Mohiuddin Alamgir, and Theresa Panuccio, The State of World Rural Poverty: An Inquiry into Its Causes and Consequences (New York: Press for the International Fund for Agricultural Development, 1992).

nomic support of their households. In Africa, for example, it is estimated that 96 percent of rural women engage in farmwork and 40 percent of small farms are managed by women.14 As a result of this work, women contribute both cash and sub- sistence income to household support. Data from many countries show that the poorer the household, the more women work for income, and the larger the proportion of household income derived from women's earnings. In some landless households in India, for instance, women are often the main or even the sole income earners in their households.15

14. Rekha Mehra, Women, Land, and Sus- tainable Development (Washington, DC: Inter- national Center for Research on Women, 1995), p. 16.

15. Bina Agarwal, "Who Sows? Who Reaps? Women and Land Rights in India," Journal of Peasant Studies, 15(4):531-81 (1988).

Some studies show that women's earnings contribute more directly to family welfare than do men's earnings because they go toward food and children's education.16

Much of the work women do goes unrecorded because it takes place in the informal sector. Estimating women's participation in the infor-

16. Mayra Buvini6 et al., "The Fortunes of Adolescent Mothers and Their Children: The Transmission of Poverty in Santiago, Chile," Population and Development Review, 18(2):269-97 (1991); Patrice Engle, "Influences of Mother's and Father's Income on Children's Nutritional Status in Guatemala," Social Sci- ence and Medicine, 37(11):1303-12 (1993); Eileen Kennedy, "Effects of Gender of Head of Household on Women's and Children's Nutri- tional Status" (Paper delivered at the Work- shop on the Effects of Policies and Programs on Women, Washington, DC, 1992); Duncan Thomas, "Intra-Household Resource Alloca- tion: An Inferential Approach," Journal of Hu- man Resources, 25(4):635-64 (1990).

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FIGURE 3 HOUSEHOLDS HEADED BY WOMEN, SELECTED COUNTRIES IN THE 1980s

Percentage

SOURCES: United Nations, The World's Women: Trends and Statistics 1970-1990 (New York: United Nations, 1991); Nancy Folbre, "Mothers on Their Own: Policy Issues for Developing Countries" (Paper prepared for the ICRW-Population Council series on the Determinants and Consequences of Female-Headed Households, 1990); CASEN, A Survey of National Socioeconomic Characteristics Conducted by the Ministry of Planning in Collaboration with the Department of Economics (Santiago: University of Chile, 1990); F. Louat, M. E. Gosh, and J. van der Gaag, "Welfare Implications of Female Headship in Jamaican Households" (Paper delivered at the International Food Policy Research Institute Workshop "Intrahouseholds Resource Allocation: Policy Issues and Research Methods," Washington, DC, 12-14 Feb. 1992).

mal sector, however, is difficult. Data are hard to obtain because they are not generally collected by census bu- reaus and other official statisticians. Nevertheless, estimates have been made for some countries, as shown in Table 2. The higher percentage of women to men employed in the informal sector reflects women's difficulty in obtaining access to employment because of their higher rates of illit- eracy, lower levels of education, lack of job skills, and the social and cul-

tural barriers to formal employment that women face.

Thus much of the development support women need is outside the formal economy, where they engage in activities such as petty trade, household help, food processing, garment manufacturing, and agriculture. Some of this employment, as in household services and agriculture, is wage employment but much of it is non-wage or self-employment, where the scale of operation is small or very

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TABLE 2 PROPORTION OF MEN AND WOMEN IN NONWAGE EMPLOYMENT

Country Year Men Women Income Level

Bolivia 1991 42 70 Middle Cape Verde 1990 42 54 Middle Egypt 1989 46 74 Low El Salvador 1991 28 48 Middle Ghana 1989 69 92 Low Indonesia 1989 70 79 Middle Korea, Republic of 1991 38 43 Middle Pakistan 1992 66 77 Low Peru 1991 39 55 Middle Tanzania 1988 84 95 Low Thailand 1989 71 76 Middle Tunisia 1989 36 51 Middle Turkey 1991 55 80 Middle

SOURCE: World Bank, World Development Report (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1995).

small (micro-enterprises), under- capitalized, and concentrated in the low-growth subsectors, where returns are low, working conditions difficult, and benefits virtually nonexistent.17

Women's enterprises face numer- ous other constraints. At the household level, for example, micro-entrepreneurs need to adjust to seasonal fluctuations, to balance multiple economic activities in order to spread risk, and to balance short-term cash flow requirements against longer- term investment requirements. In addition, due to socially defined gender roles and relationships, women face particular constraints that men do not. They may not be able to own resources and property and may have limited access to credit, skills training, or extension services. Women also face institutional barriers that may, for example, subject them to

17. Martha Alter Chen, Beyond Credit: A

SubsectorApproach to Promoting Women's En-

terprises (Ottawa: Aga Khan Foundation, 1996).

police harassment. They, as opposed to men, are often unable, for instance, to obtain licenses to sell their goods in regulated marketplaces. At the macro-economic level, women are af- fected by financing or regulatory policies that can restrict their access to credit from institutional sources such as banks and thrift and savings asso- ciations. Successful interventions to strengthen women's economic activities, therefore, require addressing these constraints.

Fortunately, there are a number of examples of efforts that have been successful in strengthening women's enterprises, raising women's incomes, and empowering women politically. NGOs have often led the way. A leading example is the Self- Employed Women's Association (SEWA) in India.

THE SELF-EMPLOYED WOMEN'S ASSOCIATION

SEWA was founded in Ahmedabad in the state of Gujarat in India in

145


1972 as a trade union of self-employed women. Inspired by Gandhian teachings, SEWA drew upon strategies employed by three different movements: the labor movement, cooperatives, and the women's movement.18 Its membership consists mainly of self-employed workers and low-paid laborers. They include hawkers and vendors who sell their products from baskets, carts, and small shops; home-based workers such as weavers, potters, garment workers, and food processors; and manual laborers and service provid- ers like head loaders (women who transport goods on their heads), do- mestic help, and construction workers. The difficulties confronting these workers include very low earnings, police harassment and extortion, and lack of organization and repre- sentation. SEWA set itself the mis- sion of organizing its members and helping them enter the economic mainstream through a dual strategy that helps women (1) to strengthen their economic enterprises and (2) to advocate for their economic and political rights.

In order to support women's economic enterprises and activities, SEWA facilitated the provision of financial and nonfinancial, or business development, services to its members. A key component of the economic strategy was the creation of the SEWA Cooperative Bank founded in 1974. The bank developed out of members' need for working capital. At first, SEWA functioned as an in-

18. Renana Jhabvala and Jane Tate, Out of the Shadows: Homebased Workers Organize for International Recognition (New York: Seeds, 1996).

termediary institution linking its members to formal-sector banks. Dif- ficulties in working with the commercial banking system prompted the creation of the SEWA bank. Commer- cial banks are generally unwilling to provide financial services to the poor, women among them, partly because they find it too costly to meet the needs of this specialized clientele. These needs include small loans, flexibility in repayment terms, simplified administrative procedures for obtaining loans (for example, filling out forms), and loan guarantee alter- natives that do not include fixed assets, which poor people cannot generally provide.19

The SEWA bank has proved to be one of the pioneers in developing and implementing creative and cost-effective strategies to meet the specialized demand of its members. The bank has simplified loan procedures and forms, helped clients fill out ap- plications, accepted group guaran- tees in lieu of other forms of collat- eral, made small loans (averaging $230), and allowed for frequent repayment possibilities matched to cli- ent earnings schedules. The SEWA bank provides both savings and credit facilities for its members. As a cooperative, the bank obtains loan capital from a combination of savings deposits, share capital, and plowed- back profits. Borrowers are required to buy 5 percent of the loan amount in bank shares when receiving a loan

19. Women's World Banking, "Best Prac- tices in Financial Services to Microen- trepreneurs," What Works: A Women's World

Banking Newsletter (1994); Rekha Mehra, An- nelies Drost-Maasry, and Ruba Rahman, Credit for Women (Washington, DC: Interna- tional Center for Research on Women, 1995).

146


and to open a savings account. Like similar institutions, the SEWA bank attempts to cover its operating costs by charging market or above-market rates of interest and fees for other services. It is important to note that market rates of interest do not pose a disincentive to SEWA's clients because the available alternative is bor- rowing in the informal sector at much higher rates.20

In addition to banking, SEWA provides its members with a variety of other business development services, including organizing them into more than fifty cooperatives. For women employed in dairy production, SEWA helps set up linkages to enable them to register in dairy cooperatives and to participate in and benefit from the services offered through the government's National Dairy Development Board. SEWA also helps women dairy producers obtain government loans, provides training in animal care and other aspects of dairy development, and supports women's leadership within the cooperatives.21 SEWA has also helped women in a variety of industries improve marketing skills and linkages. Members have been taught the essentials of market differentiation, quality control, and timing.22

In advocacy, the second component of SEWA's dual strategy, the organization has helped its members organize, define, and understand their problems, identify solutions, and demand action from the appropriate authorities. This is reflected in its work with vegetable vendors. In ad-

20. Mehra, Drost-Maasry, and Rahman, Credit for Women.

21. Chen, Beyond Credit. 22. Jhabvala and Tate, Out of the Shadows.

dition to lack of access to capital, SEWA's research showed that vegetable vendors were subjected to con- stant harassment by police because vending was not a licensed activity and had no designated space on city streets. SEWA organized its members to demand an end to police harassment and to apply for licenses. When police resisted the women's de- mands, public protests were organized and the case was taken to In- dia's Supreme Court. The vegetable vendors succeeded in obtaining licenses, official vending sites, and SEWA membership cards to show police the legitimacy of their trade. Later, when the city offered resistance to comply- ing with the Supreme Court ruling, SEWA helped the vendors pressure city officials to comply.23

Home-based workers represented, in 1994, 40 percent of SEWA's membership of 220,000 women. SEWA organized these workers to demand higher wages and better working conditions. Most home-based work in In- dia is not protected by legislation. SEWA, however, engaged in a successful five-year struggle to obtain legal recognition for garment workers so that they might receive the minimum wage. The organization also worked for a decade to enable workers in the bidi industry in Ah- medabad to earn the equivalent of the minimum wage, effectively dou- bling their wages. Support for obtaining maternity and social security benefits for some of its members has also been provided.24

23. Chen, Beyond Credit. 24. Jhabvala and Tate, Out of the Shadows.

Abidi is a local Indian cigarette rolled by hand in tobacco leaf.

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SEWAs services now also include assistance with literacy, education, job skills and leadership training, health care, and research and com- munications through publications, journals, and videos. SEWA in Ah- medabad serves as a model for other SEWA organizations around India that have independently set up banks and business development services for women and have organized producer cooperatives.

SEWA's success has been due in large measure to its recognition of the fundamental importance of poor women's economic roles. In contrast to the welfare model of development, SEWA's work is grounded in the premise that women, like men, need incomes to support themselves and their families. Therefore SEWA works with women to improve and increase the returns from their ongoing enterprises, rather than intro- ducing them to new and unfamiliar income-generating activities. It provides assistance that makes good economic sense: capital, support for organizing cooperatives to increase women's bargaining power, marketing assistance, and specialized skills training. SEWA also supports women in advocacy, leadership, and training. It serves as an intermediary on be- half of women at a policy level, providing access to legal and other resources to address the broader policy issues that affect women's economic and social advancement and their well-being.

Initially, SEWA's leaders were not grassroots women but well-educated middle-class and upper-class women who played a critical role in interact- ing with the government and private

institutions, filling in the gaps for which its members did not have the skills and education. As the organization has grown and developed, however, women who started out as illiterate rag-pickers and head- loaders were trained to take over staff and leadership positions in the organization.

SEWA has succeeded in both enhancing women's choices and ena- bling them to implement those choices economically and politically. In short, it has empowered its members.

FUTURE PROSPECTS

Recent trends show a movement away from welfare approaches among NGOs working with women. A review of eight South Asian NGOs working with women is instructive in highlighting successful strategies for the future. The review documents the successful employment of the advocacy and economic growth strategies similar to those pursued by SEWA.25 The emphasis of these NGOs is on organizing women and using compre- hensive approaches that address the multiple sources of women's disem- powerment. Economic and political strategies are linked.

25. Marilyn Carr, Martha Chen, and Renana Jhabvala, Speaking Out: Women's Economic Empowerment in South Asia (Lon- don: Intermediate Technology, 1996). The NGOs are as follows: the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, Proshika, the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme, the Women's Development Federation, Informal Sector Unions in Tamil Nadu, the Co-operative Devel- opment Foundation, the Self-Employed Women's Association/Kheda, and the Self-Em- ployed Women's Association/Banaskantha.

148


Key elements of success include responding to women's priorities to obtain employment and income; rec- ognizing that economic empowerment of women is an important entry point in working with women; mobi- lizing savings and assets and putting them under women's control; and advocacy. Also, their approach is both responsive and participatory.

Finally, the NGOs reach a sizable number of women and therefore can have a significant impact. Member- ship in some of the larger, older organizations ranges from half a million to 1 million women and is still growing. Even the membership of

smaller organizations reaches hun- dreds of thousands of women.26

These NGOs, SEWA among them, have demonstrated that it is both necessary and possible to bring women into the mainstream of economic development. The strategies they employ are replicable and sus- tainable and can have the large-scale impact that is needed to improve the lives of poor women and their families. They offer lessons that could be employed by a variety of other organizations involved in development: governments, donors, and other NGOs.

26. Ibid.

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2. women empowerment and economic development

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