Women's Empowerment and Self-help Groups

The photograph below is of a dramatic poster which highlights the many difficulties faced by ordinary village women in India. These include: receiving less education than boys; being married at a young age; being maltreated, even killed, if their dowry is not generous enough for their husband's family; being subjected to domestic violence and the possibility of attack or kidnap if they wander out alone. They may find that any girl children they give birth to ar left out to die as families want sons not daughters. When a woman goes out into the fields or factories to work she will be paid perhaps only half of the salary of a man doing the same job. If she is unfortunate in having a husband who is a drunk (and this is actually quite common) she may find that she is having to support the whole family on her poor wages while he wastes his money on drink.

There are many different projects underway in the Diocese of Vellore to help women throw off the terrible cycle of crushing work and despair in which they find themselves. The church schools help to give young girls a better education than they could normally expect, while other projects concentrate on giving women a trade so that they can become self-supporting and raise enough money to keep their families together. Women's new skills might include tailoring, computing or even running their own business.

The Centre for Rural Health and Social Education (CRHSE) in the Yelegiri Hills is the centre of a network of 1,450 self-help groups run by 18,000 women. These groups of 15 - 20 women work together on projects pooling funds and resources and sharing profits. The groups were begun with an input of government finance, but it soon became unnecessary to supervise them as the women took over their running for themselves. Projects the groups undertook include: making incense sticks, washing powder and chilli powder, making leather goods, selling milk or preparing fruit juice, maintaining two-wheeler vehicles, electronics, preparing native medicines, running stalls and cooking meals. The groups join together with an organising committee of 126 village women and four people from CRHSE.

Women's groups at work:

running shops...........................................................cooking meals.................................................making incense sticks

As women become used to working together in project groups they are able to band together to reform society. Here are some of the things that the women of Yeligiri have been able to do:

• For two and a half years women organised protest marches through their villages in an attempt to close down the alcohol stalls where their husbands got drunk and spent all the family money. At the end of that time the shopkeeper closed up and left the village.
• 136 women put themselves up as candidates for election to the village councils - 66 were elected!
• After a terrible earthquake in Gujarat every woman agreed to give at least one rupee to the disaster fund - 35,140 rupees were raised.
• A water sanitization project meant that in six months 3,918 homes now have toilets and other villages have community toilets.
• The women can now afford to send their children to school and go to hospital.
• The women now have the confidence to face bank managers and negotiate loans, or apply for government grants. All their businesses are now profitable. In fact, the groups are now well on their way to being independent from the government loans and banks: together they have earned over £1,000,000 which they administer themselves. They are no longer living below the poverty line.