[Ict4women] Computers Bring Jobs to Rural Women

[Sophia Huyer]

 From  IWDA - E Gender July 2009

INDIA:  Computers Bring Jobs to Rural Women
By Gagandeep Johar
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47074

A confident Neelam Saini, 18, told her parents she won’t get married  
now. She wants to keep working and study.

Credit:Gagandeep Johar/IPS

BAGAR, India, Jun 3 (IPS) - What strikes a visitor entering the Source  
for Change business processing centre (BPO) in rural Rajasthan, a  
deeply conservative state where women are veiled and child marriage  
still rampant, is the near absence of men in the building.

There are only rows of women to be seen behind computers that stretch  
from end-to-end of the single-storey house painted in green that has  
been transformed into the Source for Change office. BPOs are a 28  
billion dollar industry in India, based mainly in cities like Bangalore.

Source for Change has launched a social revolution in and around  
Bagar, a quiet town of some 10,000 people, some 600 kms north-west of  
New Delhi. Before it opened, educated girls here had only two options:  
work on farms or at home.

Now after two months of training, each employee is assigned  
independent data entry duties, the BPO’s main work for clients like  
the Piramal Group, a big Indian drugmaker, and Pratham, a Delhi-based  
non governmental organisation for children.

Neelam Saini, 18, has been with Source for Change for 18 months. "I  
joined after class 10," she says. "We are four girls and two boys. I  
am the oldest. My father - a farmer - said he could not afford to  
educate us beyond class 10."

	
Building Block

Alim Haji is one of the three young co-founders of Source for Change,  
a BPO in rural Rajasthan. An optical engineer from the U.S., he moved  
to Bagar to find a more meaningful life. Excerpts from an email  
interview:

IPS: Do you think the project is slowly improving gender equations in  
Bagar?

AH: I don't believe that we've reached a threshold where we can say we  
have an impact on the entire town. However, I feel we are beginning to  
see signs of change in the households.

By having a social network available at the workplace, the information  
asymmetry or lack of exposure outside the household for women is  
dissolving. This access to information is a building block toward  
empowerment.

IPS: Do you think the associates are becoming more assertive and sure  
of what they want in life.

AH: In a few cases, we have seen the associates have decision-making  
power in the household. Since the parents have allowed their daughters/ 
daughters-in-law to join Source for Change, their reaction to this  
change is well received. Nobody has been pulled out for being too  
assertive.

IPS: Does working at the BPO improve their marital prospects?

AH: After speaking to some of the associates, the general consensus is  
that it comes down to which type of person their family prefers for  
them. In some cases, the guy will prefer someone who doesn't work, and  
in other cases someone who does work.
Now a confident Saini says she intends to keep working and study  
further.

"Earlier I used to feel that since I am 10th class pass there is  
nothing much that I can do. But after working here I feel I can do  
many things. I have filled the admission form for class 12, and intend  
to take that exam next year as a private student," she explains.

Are her parents proud of her? They are "very proud of me," she says, a  
wide grin on her face. "Also," she adds in a serious voice, "because I  
am working my siblings will also be able to study further." The  
average salary is 4,000 rupees for an eight hour day.

The BPO, an initiative of the Piramal Foundation, was set up in 2000  
by three men: Shrot Katewa a biotechnologist from the University of  
Rajasthan, Alim Haji, an optical engineer from the University of New  
Mexico (U.S.) and Karthik Raman, a graduate in economics from Case  
Western Reserve University, U.S.

Only Katewa is a local person - from Bakhtawarpura, a small village  
near Bagar. However, unlike his co-founders he has previous experience  
working with BPOs having worked with two companies in Mumbai.

Both Haji and Raman wound up in Bagar just by chance. The former  
"tired of my windowless office" in the U.S. decided he did not want to  
spend the rest of his life like that and found the Piramal Foundation  
on the internet. Raman has worked amongst tribal communities in the  
southern state of Tamil Nadu.

The Piramal Foundation is supported by the family-run Piramal Group, a  
giant pharmaceutical company with a turnover of 5 billion dollars.

The group’s early founders were born and brought up close to Bagar,  
and the Foundation is associated with many other projects in the area  
including the Bagar Employment Institute which runs courses in English- 
speaking and computer literacy.

Sonam Jangir, 18, who is in the first year of an undergraduate  
programme, says she is the first woman from her village, Islampur, to  
have a job. "My parents asked me why did I want to work when no women  
in the family had ever worked? I told them this is an era of computers  
and it is essential to know computers," she says.

She may have started a revolution in her village. "After I started  
working, five more girls from my village have got enrolled," she says  
with quiet satisfaction.

The BPO states its mission is to address the serious problem of lack  
of job opportunities for educated women in rural India. As Katewa, one  
of the founders, puts it: "A major problem in this part of the country  
is that while women were being educated, they were married off and  
their potential was wasted.

"We thought one of the ways to utilise their talent was to keep them  
here since the other constraint is that women are not allowed to move  
away from their homes in search of jobs," he adds.

Initially the going was tough. There was stiff resistance from family  
members. "We had to convince the men in the household like the father- 
in-law, brother, father, husband that this was something they should  
let their daughter-in-law, daughter, sister do," says Haji.

"On the first day of training, there was a crowd of men outside the  
office," he recalls. "They wanted to check out the place and us,  
whether their women were safe or not!"

Now Source for Change has expansion plans and intends to increase its  
employers in Bagar to 100 associates by January 2010. There are plans  
also to create a network of offices that will be spread across  
Rajasthan, each employing between 100 and 150 women.

With new clients like the Rajasthan government and the Confederation  
of Indian Industry, the biggest business association in the country  
with 7,500 members, the BPO can afford to make new plans.

In Bagar, its youngest employees are 18 and the oldest, Sunita, is 30.  
For Sunita Chowdhary, the BPO has been a life-saver. "My husband is  
not working," she confides. "Because of this job, I am able to educate  
our two children."

For Saini too, her life has changed. "Earlier I was very quiet and  
never voiced my opinions," she introspects. "But now I feel confident  
to say what I am feeling. My parents were asking me to get married and  
I told them, I don’t want to for another four years. I want to work  
for Source for Change!" (END/2009) 
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