Linked with Self Employed Women’s Association SEWA.
by Renana Jhabvala, Coordinator and Member, Executive Committee of the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), Ahmedabad, India, October 5, 1998.
The most popular pictures presented about women of South Asia are those of victims. They are the victims of fundamentalist societies, forced into purdah or sati. They are the victims of underdevelopment and poverty-low life expectancy, high illiteracy. They are the victims of violence, of discrimination. These images of the victim, helpless South Asian women are highlighted by the media and reinforced by academia.
There is, however, another side to women in South Asia. Most women in South Asia work. They are producers, workers, entrepreneurs contributing to the family and to the economy. They work in their family farms, as agricultural labor in other people’s farms, in forests collecting minor produce, as construction workers, as street vendors, as artisans, as factory workers, as livestock tenders-the list is endless. In India, 92% of employment is in the informal sector, where there is no fixed employer-employee relationship, and nearly 50% of these workers are women. These workers, both men and women, contribute 64% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product and nearly 70% of the country’s savings.
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