With economic independence comes empowerment, believes SEWA's Reema Nanavaty

As the head of the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), Reema Nanavaty leads the organisation's economic and rural development activities. In the process, she reaches out to around seventeen million women and their families across the country, generating employment opportunities for them. For her work that focuses on creating livelihood for poor women, she was bestowed the Padma Shri in 2013, the country's fourth highest civilian award.

Iamin caught up with her while she was in Mumbai to deliver a talk at the TEDxGatewayWomen Conference, discussing SEWA's activities and the challenges of promoting entrepreneurship in rural India.

What are the main challenges that you face to get women into the workforce and to retain them?
The main challenge is to create sustainable employment opportunities in the rural areas so that women enter the workforce. Young women feel that agriculture has become redundant. The skill based work that they were doing for generations including weaving or embroidery has now become obsolete. I would not call it a challenge but the main task is to skill India. We give a lot of attention to the professional skills in our country but that is not the only answer to the problem of livelihood. The challenge is also to find ways to make rural youth feel charged to take up the traditional employment options like agriculture, forestry, dairy, fishery, weaving and block printing among others.

The second challenge is to change the mindset of the policy makers. We have to ensure that they understand that India has a large informal sector that contributes to the national economy, the GDP and the national savings. We need policies so that these informal workers don’t just remain workers but they also form their own informal collectives and co-operatives. They too need the opportunity to enter mainstream economy.

A lot of women you work with have not been decision makers in their own families. How do you ensure that these women feel empowered?
We believe in economic security. When a woman starts bringing home income on a regular basis then she gets her own identity. She is then automatically involved in the decision making process in her family. Once she is economically secured, she is able to tackle the large number of other social issues. She no longer feels vulnerable as she now has a choice.

What kind of training do you provide the women to ensure that they learn the right skill sets? 
It is an integrated process. We believe in ‘learning by doing’. Most of the learning happens on the job. I am going to share the story of one of our artisan member Puri Ben. She knew how to embroider but had never used it for commercial purposes or as a means to livelihood. When she started working with buyers and designers along with other women, they were given pieces to embroider using their own traditional motif pattern. The sample given was of a peacock but the colour scheme used was black, grey and white. After a few days when I visited the women, I saw that they had added a tinge of magenta and red to the design. I asked them why they did that despite having a sample right in front of them. They said that whoever has given us this order does not know that peacocks are not black and white and grey.
That incident made us realise that the women do not have to get used to simply using different kinds of raw materials but they also need to exposed to the markets. They need to understand what the market appreciates, how it responds to the colour schemes etc. We do conduct classroom training. We have set up a SEWA management course in partnership with the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA). We have designed management courses which we call as ‘mini MBA’ that addresses what kind of management skills and leadership skills these women need so that they can build their enterprises. They understand concepts of pricing, costing, budgeting, business plan and marketing strategy but at their own pace and in their own way.

Have you seen a change in the way women are treated, especially in the rural areas?
You see the changes happening over a period of time. Earlier women were not even allowed to leave their homes to go and attend trainings or meetings. Today when you go to the village you see subtle changes. The women attend meetings and the men make tea and serve them. The men shoulder household responsibilities when the women are busy with their marketing events and training. 
We would not have seen the changes if we would have insisted on it in a feminist way. This is a change that has come when the women are given economic security.

What sort of a role would you want the government to play now? 
We do need environment and policies which equip the organisations of the poor to enter mainstream. So if I set up a company which is owned by artisans like Puri Ben and if she needs to register her company and you start enforcing all the company laws and the acts, she will not be able to manage that. She needs an enabling framework which will allow her to transition to a role where she will be managing her own company. 

If we are talking about financial inclusion then we need to design financial products that women can use. We have what we call a ‘livelihood fund’. It is a combination of a grant and a fund so that women can repay it back when they start generating surplus. Till then they can use the fund. Such financial products are needed too.

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