The New Nation - Internet Edition

Most projects do not support gender equity

Md.Abdul Kader Talukder

In the 1980s, governments and development agencies became much more aware of the need to consider gender issues in their environmental and natural resource management programmes. This led to changes in project design and implementation. It is too soon to say definitively how well this new gender-sensitive approach is working. But it may be a mistake to expect too much of the new style interventions. Policy makers first came to appreciate that women 'play an essential role in the management of natural resources, including soil, water, forests and energytand often have a profound traditional and contemporary knowledge of the natural world around them'. (World Bank, 1991).

The exclusion of women from environmental projects - through outright neglect or belief in the gender neutrality of projects - would thus be a recipe for project failure. Subsequently, donor agencies came to see women as especially vulnerable: 'their responsibilities as day-to-day environmental managers tmake women both victims of and contributors to the natural environment's degradation and pollution.' (Ibid).On the other hand, gradually, awareness grew of many grassroots success stories of women fighting to conserve local resources - such as those described in Power to Change (Women's Feature Service, 1994). This then led to women being viewed as 'major local assets to be harnessed in the interests of better environmental management' (Davidson cited in Braidotti et al, 1994).

The new style of environmental project accordingly asks whether natural resource users are male or female and is concerned to 'reach the right people' in the delivery of services. For example, social forestry schemes have been redesigned, recognising the diverse uses of tree products and different species preferences of men and women: men typically want timber for construction and fencing, while women need fodder and woodfuel. And, in water and sanitation activities, women's participation on water committees or in maintaining facilities is becoming the rule rather than the exception.

"Women were seen as 'assets to be harnessed in the interests of better environmental management'"But the ideas behind the new approach are not always honoured in practice. First, project intentions can be subverted. Leaving environmental management to community level institutions - such as those promoted by the Aga Khan programme in northern Pakistan - does not guarantee women's access to project resources. And the aim of involving women at all stages of the project cycle often translates into demands on women to do voluntary work, without giving them a fair share of project benefits. Second, compared to a gender analysis of the underlying problems, environmental projects promote a limited set of aims.

Policy documents (e.g. World Bank, 1991) acknowledge that lack of property rights reduces women's capacity to conserve environmental resources but the new approach does not address this issue. Donors still favour giving women access to credit, to help them manage resources and build up assets. This is naive in assuming that traditional male control over land and other assets will not extend to newly acquired natural resources.

Trying to give women authority within isolated projects without taking into account their restricted property rights is almost bound to fail. Is there any way of strengthening women's control over resources in environmental projects? Legal changes guaranteeing women independent property rights and increased political representation are needed at the national level. But such reforms take time. They also need to be complemented at the local level by building up women's capacity to claim the new rights attained. One approach suggested for environmental projects is support for collective actions by women (Agarwal, 1994).

This has the potential to confer inalienable use rights - though not necessarily property rights - over natural resources. Women have more chance of exercising rights as a group than as individuals. Wasteland development projects in India (such as the Bankora projects in West Bengal) have successfully supported women's group efforts to regenerate forest and improve land productivity.

They also build on women's greater use rights over common property than on privatised lands. But women need to keep the initiative here: new government policies in India are formalising collective management of forests under male-dominated communal institutions, undermining women's traditional property rights in forest resources. Support for women's collective actions in addressing natural resource management problems is one instance of a general strategy to strengthen women's bargaining power in their relations with men. Other examples need to be found to develop the policy relevance of this approach to a broad range of environmental problems.

Self-help group approach proved effective in women development

Anjulika Thingam Samom

Several faded old 'chunnis' (stoles) stitched together partition 35-year-old Najma's office from her kitchen in the bamboo-walled room, adjoining her dilapidated mud house. Posters and old cloth banners on domestic violence, child rights, gender and conflict vie for attention with a huge poster of activist Irom Chanu Sharmila arguing for the repeal of the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958.

"See my home," she urges. As I walk in, the smell of fresh cow dung and mud hits my nostrils. "I was coating the floor with mud and cow dung when your call came," she apologises.

"There are so many things we need - food, mattresses, bed, mosquito netst I've been running around, asking everybody for help. Some donated those old clothes, I've to wash them," she says, pointing to the untidy pile in the room.

The two beds in the one-room hut had only a few blankets serving as mattresses. A heavily pregnant woman was stretched out on one of them, a protective arm cradling an emaciated child to her breast. "This is Samina. Her husband drove her and her two-year-old son out of the house," explains Najma.

Phundreimayum Najma herself is no stranger to gender discrimination and domestic violence. As a young girl born into a 'pangan' (Meitei Muslim) family in a Santhel village in Imphal West district - about 30 kilometres from the capital - she has had to fight tooth and nail for education and the freedom to work for the women in her orthodox community.

"There was no 'madrassa' (Islamic school) for girls in our village at that time. As the only girl in my class, I endured taunts and sexually offensive words and gestures from classmates and teachers. All my brothers received higher education. Though I was the only one among my sisters to pass my matric (class 10), all my parents could talk about was my marriage," she recalls.

In an act of defiant desperation, Najma, at 17, eloped with a man whom she had met only twice. But she walked out of the marriage six months later. "I wasn't exactly what you call beautiful. Apart from that I didn't bring a handsome dowry. These were negative factors for my mother-in-law, who tried every trick to ensure that I didn't talk to my husband during the day or share his bed at night. tI wasn't to talk to the neighbours, and if I spent some time reading or writing, I was accused of writing letters to other men," she narrates impassively.

"My parents thought I was making up stories. Even if they believed me they thought I would soon settle down," Najma says.

After the divorce, Najma started teaching some housewives and children in her locality. She also initiated the 'cheng marup' or rice thrift fund to ensure economic independence for the women in her community. "Everyday the women in the group would take out one handful of rice from the quantity to be cooked. These were collected and kept in my house, and twice a month, whoever's turn came, she would get the entire amount," she said, adding with a smile, "The men started talking. I was a bad woman, a divorcee, encouraging others to steal. But we persisted and the 'marup' ran its full course."

However, it was only after her second marriage, this time to Ayub Khan of Santhel Makha Leikai, and the birth of two children, that Najma started working more actively as a gender activist. "I know how it feels to be unwanted. And I know how dire the consequences can be - my youngest sister, Mumtaj, died heartbroken - separated from her beloved due to societal norms and individual hatred, and forcibly married off to another, who only beat her and sold off her belongings. I felt there must be more girls like her, and I must save them," she adds.

In 2001, she attended a workshop on gender. "Listening to the resource person, Mangsatabam Sobita of the Women Action for Development (WAD), an NGO based in Imphal, I realised that what she was terming as gender discrimination is what I had been experiencing all along. She has been an inspiration and an adviser since then," says Najma.

From establishing self help groups (SHGs) of women selling vegetables and rearing cows to generating income independent of their husbands, to fighting domestic violence and gender discrimination cases, to opening a shelter home for destitute 'pangan' women - the first of its kind in Manipur - Najma's journey has been fraught with obstacles and struggle.

"At first, the menfolk and the 'maulvis' (Muslim clerics) started whispering amongst themselves, 'Najma is leading all the 'pangan' women to do Meira Paibi work like the Meitei women'. They would ask my family about my whereabouts if I stayed overnight for workshops," she narrates.

But even as the struggle grew harder, more women were approaching Najma for help. Matters came to a head when, in early 2006, the 'maulvis' used the local public address system to announce that all women SHGs in the village were banned on religious grounds. "'Najma is making the women go outside the home, they will all become 'barbaad' (ruined)' - this is what they said," she reminisces.

When she continued working, Najma and her family were ostracised. "We were not to use the community ponds or buy from the local shops. I thought it was a huge joke, but one day when my youngest son came crying saying that the shopkeepers had refused to sell sweets to him, I realised what I was up against. My son kept crying and I cried with him," she recalls.

Determined to defy the ban, Najma went ahead and took water from the pond of the 'maulvis'. In retribution, her husband was threatened with death if he didn't stop her from working. Ayub stood by her this time and was beaten up twice.

The matter was settled in June 2006, only after a meeting of the 'maulvis' in the presence of the Jamiatul Ulama, Manipur, and representatives of the United Manipur Muslim Women Development Organisation (UMMWDO) and the All Manipur Muslim Students' Organisation (AMMSO) at Babupara. It was decreed that Najma wasn't doing anything wrong by working for the betterment of women and that all accusations against her were false.

"One maulvi approached me the other day and asked me to take in his daughter into our SHG work," she smiles in triumph.

In her office, the Organisation for Social Development (OSD) located at Santhel, Najma welcomes all those who need her help. "We must have fought about 100 cases till now, most of them with the help of WAD," she says.

At present, her shelter home has two inmates - Samina, 21, and a high school student, Thoibi (name changed), who was duped by her tuition teacher into sexual relations with promises of marriage and then deserted. Samina's parents-in-law had subjected her to enormous harassment, even to the extent of getting her to abort two pregnancies. Her husband, a rickshaw driver, had stood by her for some years, but joined in the harassment later on. Samina, who didn't want to face the humiliation of returning to her parental home, turned to Najma for help.

Though women in Manipur across communities have a relatively higher status when compared to other parts of India, patriarchal traditions as well as prolonged conflict in the state have spawned widespread crimes against women, especially domestic violence, rape, molestation and even murder. (Courtesy: Women's Feature Service)

The woman behind Obama

Elayne Clift

Thirty years ago, when Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro lived in Yogyakarta, it was perhaps a less busy, tourist-filled metropolis than it is today. But probably little else has changed since the 1970s. Marlioboro, the wide boulevard that is home to copious Batik emporia, is still filled with 'becak' (bicycle rickshaws) and horse-drawn surreys. 'Warung' (street-side food vendors) continue to offer 'Martabak' (pancakes) and 'Nasi Gorung' (fried rice). And in this cultural capital of Indonesia, artists still thrive.

Soetoro, who died in 1995 at age 52 from ovarian cancer, was the mother of Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for president in the U.S. Her influence on her now-famous son cannot be underestimated. Although he wrote a bestseller about his search for the absent father, 'Dreams From My Father', Obama has said that his mother "was the single constant in my life." He describes her as "the kindest, most generous spirit I have ever known. What is best in me," he says, "I owe to her."

Soetoro was a study in contradictions. Married to Obama's Kenyan father when she was a pregnant teenager, she went on to earn a Ph.D. in anthropology and do vital work for women in the field of microfinance. A Midwestern American, she married first an African and then an Indonesian. A mother who adored her children, she insisted on working. She has been described by those who knew her as "fearless, capable, intelligent, curious and open."

Stanley Ann Dunham (so named because her father wanted a boy) was born in 1942 in Kansas. The family moved frequently and lived in Honolulu when Ann enrolled at the University of Hawaii. There, she met Barack Obama Sr. in a Russian language class. Several months after they met, in February 1961, Ann and Barack married. Ann was three months pregnant. She dropped out of college. When Barack was not yet one, his father left for Harvard to earn a Ph.D. in economics and the marriage ended.

Not long after, with help from family and friends, Ann returned to college to earn a bachelor's degree. During this time she met Lolo Soetoro at the University of Hawaii. In 1967, Ann and her young son Barack followed him to Jakarta, to a home without electricity, a backyard with chickens and a baby crocodile, and a neighborhood of unpaved streets. Eventually Soetoro did well working for an American oil company but he and Ann grew apart as she became increasingly intrigued with traditional Indonesia.

Ann began teaching English at the American embassy in Indonesia while giving her son English lessons in the early morning hours before he left for school.

At night she would expose her young son to books about the American civil rights movement and her daughter, Maya, to multicultural dolls. "She believed that bigotry of any sort was wrong and that the goal was to treat everybody as unique individuals," Obama told TIME Magazine in an April interview.

In 1971, when Obama was 10 years old, his mother sent him back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents while attending prep school on scholarship. The separation was hard on both mother and son but a year later Ann was also back in Hawaii to earn a master's degree in anthropology, focusing on Indonesia. This also marked the end of her marriage to Soetoro from whom she was divorced in 1980.

The move marked a turning point in Ann's life. She became increasingly self-assured and passionate about her work, eventually deciding to return to Indonesia for Ph.D. fieldwork. Obama, then 14, decided to stay in Hawaii for high school. Again, the separation was difficult but mother and son remained close.

Ann began working for the Ford Foundation, as programme officer for women and employment and her home became a haven for politicians, artists and others who wanted to talk liberal politics.

Eventually she became a leader in microfinancing for women in Indonesia, well before the idea of giving women small loans became a major component of development. Her research helped the Bank Rakyat Indonesia set policy and today, according to TIME Magazine, "Indonesia's microfinance program is No. 1 in the world in terms of savers, with 31 million members, according to Microfinance Information eXchange Inc."

By this time Obama, having graduated from Harvard Law School and having turned down lucrative work in a private law firm, was working in Chicago as a community organiser, an experience he sights often as he campaigns. He would soon go on to state and then national politics.

In 1992, two years before her premature death, Ann completed the extensive Ph.D. dissertation she had been working on for nearly two decades. The thesis, an in-depth analysis of peasant blacksmithing in Indonesia, is dedicated to Barack and Maya "who seldom complained when their mother was in the field."

In an interview with 'The New York Times' in March, later reprinted by 'The Jakarta Post Sunday Magazine', Barack Obama's half-sister Maya said her mother "felt that somehow, wandering through uncharted territory, we might stumble upon something that will, in an instant, seem to represent who we are at the core." She did not want her children "to be limited by fear or narrow definitions," Maya added.

As Barack Obama campaigns for the presidency in America at a time of enormous social, political and economic change, those words seem prophetic. The first black to seek the highest office in the land, Ann Soetoro's son is certainly wandering through uncharted territory. He has spoken eloquently about not letting fear dominate voters' decisions and he has worked diligently to broaden crucial definitions that influence policy.

In Indonesia, almost no one seems to be aware of Barack Obama's connection to this country. Not one person I spoke to informally for this article knew that he and his mother had lived here. No one realised he had an Indonesian half-sister (now working in Hawaii). And yet, ask anyone about Barack Obama and there is an immediate thumbs up, accompanied by a broad smile. (Some people think he is already president.) "Good man," they say. "Very good man."