In the poor strata of the Indian society women are the pillars of the family. They bear the main support and worry for the children, they go beyond limits to secure at least one warm meal per day and they are an epitaph of tolerance and submission. Men of this society level usually do not know loyalty, responsibility or morality, they exploit women unscrupulously. While men can enjoy all freedom on women, women lose all reputation, if they ever dare to speak to another man. Men are given the status of governing and dominating and enjoying idleness and laziness. This inequality leads men into alcoholism and women into toil. Even their parents and grandparents have led their lives in the same manner. Men, though much inferior to their wives in respect of their care and efforts toward the family welfare, enjoy a striking dominance over their wives, which society has bestowed on them.

This dominance is also reflected in professional life. When women carry out heavy works at the verge of their capacity, men can idle around and put a stone or brick into place at undue intervals. For this heavy work women get wages of two thirds of the men's wages. This presentation may have a tinge of generalisation, but it surely applies to 99% of the cases.

In view of this screaming injustice we had been thinking of changing this condition since long. The main object was to train women in some skill to be eligible for higher wages than the pittance which they are wasting their energy for.

Our first project in this direction was a tailoring course which we offered to the mothers of our school children. They learnt the trade well, but did not manage to get sufficient income, as their clientele did not pay adequately and we had not taught them marketing strategies.

Another field was a masonry training in the course of building low cost houses for the poor. This training only proved successful as long as the trainer, Mr. Dahlmanns from Germany, guided them. Independently they could not improve their income with this trade, which was also not respected as a women's trade in society.

Another project was more successful than the earlier ones: a training in house keeping in a 3-star hotel. 15 women were trained for one month which secured them jobs of double the salary than what they had earned before.

Yet another training was offered to 30 women to train them as nurse assistants. They completed a practical and theoretical training of three months in a hospital. All women were offered to be taken over by another hospital, but none accepted the job opportunity. They could not adjust their daily routine to a shift system with night duties and also not accept the need of travelling in a public bus for half an hour. Most of these training courses were combined with a stipend to enable them to meet their expenses during the training. Also the daily transport was provided in a private bus free of charges. The subsidy of all these trainings were considerable, reaching Rs. 4 lakhs as a minimum. But the result was deplorable. We still have to learn to select the women who are open to place themselves into the main stream of the society which means adjustments of their family life in a broader way.

We are learning.

December 2010