[Ict4women] Computer Jobs for Rural India Women

[Sophia Huyer]

Excerpted from InterPress Service (IPS):


INDIA: Computers Bring Jobs to Rural Women



By Gagandeep Johar, Bagar, India, June 3, 2009



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." Now a confident Saini says she intends to  
keep working and study further. ( . . . ) 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 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!" ( . . . )

Read the whole story at:



http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47074