Exploring Skills

Women in home based employments

As soon as the children leave for school, Bishnu Lama, 34, hurriedly finishes her household chores. She has barely six hours to herself before her children get back around 4 pm. So, she quickly unpacks her bag of colorful woolen balls and gets ready to knit decorative doll clothes.

Spending the afternoon hours with woolen balls, knitting tools and keeping note of her finished products have been a part of her daily routine for the past seven years. “My work is sent to America,” boasts Bishnu, as she points to a finished pair of tiny decorative pink sweaters.

She is soon accompanied by her landlord, who has her own set of woolen balls and is working on a different design than Bishnu’s. Sitting inside her crammed room, they chat casually but none of them take away their gaze from their work and their hands continue to make patterned strokes.

Both of these women are hired by Association for Craft producers at Rabi Bhawan as ‘home based producers.’ The non-government organization provides these women with raw materials which they can take home and complete the tasks at their convenience. Then, the organization pays them on per-piece basis.

“I’d thought of taking up a job somewhere but managing work with household chores proved to be very difficult,” says Bishnu. Now, she makes money from home; that too working at her own convenience.

But it isn’t as easy as it seems, she says. “Because I’ve to concentrate on tiny details for hours, my eyes are often strained and I’ve frequent headache too.” But Bishnu, who has ventured into sewing, making traditional agarbattis and bead necklaces, agrees that knitting, so far, has been her smartest choice.

Originally from Goldhunga village in the outskirts of the capital, her family had migrated to Soaltee Mode when she was a child. But though she was raised in a city environment, she couldn’t finish her school. A class eight drop-out, she started looking for jobs or skill trainings since then and tried her hands at many different things.

“There has been a lot of trial and error,” she says. She elaborates that many of her attempts failed due to lack of investment to continue those trainings while after marriage, she just could not give enough time due to family responsibilities. But she could not afford to be a stay-at-home mother when her family repeatedly suffered from financial problems.

Now even when she works leisurely at home, she manages to earn at least Rs 3000 per month. Apart from that, she can choose to work at her own pace, taking larger orders or decreasing the work load according to her choice.

“It’s better to get involved in any income generating activity than to sit jobless at home,” says Bishnu, who adds that it’s more necessary for women from low income families to be financially independent.

Agreeing with Bishnu’s opinions, Sabita Rai, 25, has also been financially independent for past four years though she never leaves her home. The native of Nuwakot is renting an apartment at Kuleshwor and has been making a living by making bead bracelets. Around her locality, she says that there are around 15-20 women who have taken up a job that has a more lucrative earning than that of Bishnu’s. These women make up to Rs 9000 per month by finishing up to 12 bead bracelets every day.

“All the women involved in making bead bracelets are originally from different parts of the country who have come to the capital with their parents or husbands,” she says. Even Sabita had come to Kathmandu with her parents and worked as a domestic help in her teens. After getting married at the age of 20, she started to make bead necklaces earning a mere three rupees per piece.

“But I couldn’t continue it because the price was very low and we weren’t even paid on time and also because it was difficult juggling a job and the responsibilities of a newborn,” she says. Now, eight years old, her son is admitted to a nearby government school and Sabita manages her time to sit down with other women in a nearby open space and make bead bracelets till her son comes back from school.

During late morning hours, Sabita is accompanied by Manju Khadka, 29, Rita Tamang, 27, and Maya Lama, 43, who gather after completing their morning chores. They own their individual set of beads and a stitching needle and move their expert hands as they keep chatting about their lives.

Among them, Manju who is nine months pregnant had quit her job at a nearby school after her pregnancy. “This has been the ideal job for me,” she says adding that making bead bracelet at home gave her freedom to rest as much as she liked and at the same time, she makes more than what she used to.

When asked, where their products go, the women unanimously say ‘America’, but one can make out that they have very little knowledge about their product market or even their employer. They are provided with the raw materials and are paid through a secondary contact person, who is also only contacted by a minor company representative. These women are, therefore, oblivious of the trade of their finished products, their market value or the organization responsible for their employment.

Nonetheless, the home based employment opportunity has been a boon to women like Sabita, who is illiterate and would have had no options but to resort to low paying jobs if it weren’t for making bead bracelets. “Being financially independent is one of the best feelings. You feel like an equal in the household, contributing equally to the expenses,” she says.

But none of the women have been saving their income for the future. Most of the women have one or two school going kids but they seem to have no plan for their college expenses or even emergency medical expenses.

In terms of saving and planning for future, Bishnu also seem to be a step backward. Her daughter, who will be appearing for her SLC exams in a year, is aspiring to be a nurse. But according to Bishnu, she will be unable to fulfill her daughter’s dreams due to the lack of funds.

Though these women are financially independent at present, lack of saving mechanism and future planning still put them in a vulnerable situation. With no or very low education level, they say that they are not confident with financial dealings with banks.

But, Bidya Devi Manandhar, who owns a small tailoring shop at Kalimati sets an example for these women. The sixty-four year old has been running her household through her shop for the last 29 years, educating and marrying off her three daughters and a son solely through her earnings.

Originally from Pako, Newroad, she was married off at the age of 16, which forced her to drop-out of school. She says that she has been sewing since her childhood days as both her mother and grandmother were very fond of sewing. Coincidentally Bidya’s husband ran a men’s tailoring shop on the ground floor of their home at Ombahal, which served as a foundation for establishing a women’s section and later a separate shop of her own.

Now, the men’s tailoring shop has already shut down but Bidya still continues with the women’s section. When she shifted from Ombahal to Kalimati seven years back, she decided to retain her shop on a small room on the ground floor of her residence. “I thought that since all my responsibilities were complete, I should retire. But then, I realized that it would only make me dull and lazy so I continued to work,” she says.

Though she says that she did not take any formal training for tailoring, one of her daughters; Sarita Manandhar studied tailoring and is helping Bidya run the shop.

“She was a big inspiration while growing up. She was not only good at handling household chores but was also farsighted where the funds and its proper usage were concerned,” says Sarita.

Bidya adds that though she didn’t have the chance to be well educated; she did her best to support her family and most importantly, stayed independent all her life. She practically never left home, establishing her shop as she moved, but still managed to earn her living.

Many women, especially those who have moved from rural parts of the country to the city areas, seem to be suffering more as they are detached from their traditional occupation but aren’t groomed enough to compete with the city folks. In such situations, many household skills such as knitting, sewing and crimping can be ideal sources of making money for these women.

Financial independency is definitely the key to women empowerment. But in traditional context, where women do not receive good education in their youth and are obliged to fulfill family obligations after their marriage, their ability to earn a living has many limitations. The home based employment, however, explores the same traditional skills for women and can help them conquer those very limitations.

Small business trainings

Aiding women empowerment

The Department of Cottage and Small Industries (DCSI) is the authorized government body that works for promoting and managing small and cottage industries in Nepal. It looks after the monitoring and registration of small and cottage industries, and has also been providing different skill enhancing trainings helpful for small businesses and cottage industries.

Gokul Dhital, director of DCSI talks about the nature of these trainings, its impact on the establishment of small and cottage industries and the state of women’s involvement in such training courses.

What kinds of trainings are provided by the Department of small and cottage industries?

We have different types of trainings and the duration of the courses range from seven days to three months. There’re also six month long training programs that include both basic and advanced courses. Some of the popular training programs are sewing, knitting, house wiring, plumbing, beauty parlor trainings but there’re more than 90 courses that are offered by the government according to the local demand.

How do you call for trainings and what criteria should be fulfilled to conduct them?

The trainings in different districts depend upon the availability of raw material, mainly focusing on the effective usage of local raw materials. For instance, we have training courses on extracting juices from sweet oranges in Sundhuli, where these fruits grow abundantly. Similarly, the locals of Jumla are provided trainings on preparing jam, jelly and candies from apples as Jumla has a large production of this fruit. Basically, we provide trainings according to the local demand.

How do you make sure that such trainings are helpful to the participants?

We don’t just give training but also help the trainees with machinery in a group of three to four members. We also have provision of micro credit program for trainees who want to establish small or cottage industry.

What’s the state of women in these trainings, in terms of participation and implementation?

I think women are the ones who’re mostly taking advantage of these trainings. More than 70% of the participants in the trainings are women. And according to our ongoing impact study, more than half of the participants of these trainings are successfully running small businesses or are making their skills useful in other economy generating activities. In fact, it’s seen that women are more successfully in using their learned skill than their male counterparts.

On skill developments

Krishna Devi Maharjan carefully checks the pattern of her woolen craft and makes sure that there aren’t any unnecessary knots before continuing to knit another pattern. After she’s completed a craft, she re-checks to see if there are any unnecessary strings dangling from it, before tossing it into the pile of finished products.

Maharjan works as one of the ‘home based producers’ at Association for Craft Producers (ACP). “When I submit the finished products, a staff will have a thorough look at all the pieces before giving their stamp of approval. Only after that, will I be able to draw my wage,” she says.

ACP exports such handicraft items to different countries; its market mainly being the USA and European countries and thus seeks perfect quality from its producers. “If they aren’t satisfied with any of the products, they even make us redo it all over again,’ adds Maharjan. [break]

“Nepal’s handicrafts are very rich in design but we need to make sure of its quality and finishing,” says Sumitra KC, administrative officer at ACP.

Established in 1984, currently ACP has 1200 producers for different handicrafts that include knitting, sewing, felting, ceramics, leather, weaving and carpentry among others. According to KC, they have around 300 producers alone in the knitting unit.

“Not every producer is capable of producing all the items ordered by the buyer. There are some who prefer to knit only sweaters or decorative items or bags, so we contact such producers according to our need,” she says.

However, when ACP has a new order, they call the producers, even home based ones, to the office and are compulsorily required to attend an orientation program on the creation of new designs. “We provide skill enhancement classes to ensure that the quality in design and finishing isn’t compromised,” says KC, who adds that the producers must have some basic skills before they are hired.

Even though, women can use their household skills to make a living, to make it a commercial success, they will need to learn some refining skills. To address this very need, the Department of Cottage and Small Industries (DCSI), a government body offers elaborate training programs. Other non-government organizations, for instance Women Entrepreneurship Association Nepal (WEAN), also offer different training programs to help women hone their skills.

But DSCI requires its participants to have passed at least the fifth standard. “It’ll be difficult to conduct trainings if we take illiterates for the courses as all of them will involve some kind of measurements and the participants must be able to read those,” says Gokul Dhital, director at DSCI.

But according to Kamala Oli, a consultant studying the impact of the trainings by DSCI at Kathmandu and Banke, such trainings have helped people take up jobs that were previously considered diminutive.

“Trainings programs have not only helped raised the skill aptitude but has also helped change their attitudes towards jobs,” she says. According to her study, she has found that, women are more successful after taking these trainings. “They’ve come out of their cocoons and have started to take their financial situation in their own hands rather than relying on their spouses,’ she adds.

Skill development trainings are important also because they surpass the academic requirements and create employment opportunities for the less educated ones. In case of women, the trainings will not only enhance their traditional skills, but also boost their confidence and make them independent.

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