Transformative Policy for Poor Women by Bina Fernandez

Author:Bina Fernandez [Fernandez, Bina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Women's Studies
ISBN: 9781317007753
Google: VkCgCwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-02-24T06:01:17+00:00

Assessing Policy Practices

This section assesses how Policy Practices are significantly influenced by the intersecting inequalities of gender, class and ethnic identity. The involvement of husbands/male relatives or village men was observed to varying degrees in seven of the SHGs (see Table 5.4). For instance, the women of the Narmata SHG mentioned at the start of this book had initially employed a young man from the village for a salary of Rs.1,000 per month as a driver for their tractor hire enterprise. For the first 3 years, the group members earned some income (though it was not significant enough to change their poverty status) and the SHG was able to make some loan repayment instalments. In 2003, the tractor was impounded by the police after an accident and the group had to pay a fine of Rs.30,000, which was paid off after two years by the Mendha Lekha village community fund. After this, the group handed over the tractor business to Vasant Hore, a local mill owner.

An extreme example of male involvement was Saraswati SHG (in Waddha, Armori block), which the Gadchiroli CEO had declared73 a ‘success story’ since they were running a rice-mill. On investigation, the rice-mill was found to be managed by a ‘guarantor’ who was a member of the Gram Panchayat. The ten illiterate adivasi women members of the SHG had no control over the enterprise (run by hired workers), or information about the accounts (even their SHG bank pass book was with the ‘guarantor’), but were legally liable for the repayment of the Rs.225,000 SGSY loan,74 Similar stories of the exploitation of SHGs by local male elite have been documented in other evaluations of SGSY (Purushotham, 2006: 124, 135, Centre for Management Development, 2003: Para. 5.19–5.21).

Male involvement in SHGs particularly in account-keeping and marketing of enterprises meant that in several of the SHGs, men’s sense of entitlement to policy benefits was high. Although investigation of the negotiation of family finances was beyond the scope of this study, there is ample research showing women’s differentiated and often subordinate position in the gendered micro-politics of intra-family resource allocation (Kabeer 1997, Goetz and Sen Gupta 1996, Sen 1990). These studies allow us to infer that, although there may be improvements women’s status in the family due to their association with the SHG, women may be in a subordinate position within their families in negotiating control over income from SGSY enterprises.

Pushing the analysis of male involvement in SHGs beyond the ‘good girl/bad boy’ stereotype (White 2007: 16) requires consideration of first, how the narrative of ‘male appropriation of policy benefits’ apparent in the case of Saraswati SHG may be more complex in the case of Narmata SHG or other groups. Male involvement may sometimes demonstrate cross-gender community solidarity (in the support that the Narmata SHG received from the village fund) or a family livelihood diversification strategy, as in the case of Jyoti SHG and SHG No. 1 in Dhar (see Table 5.4). Second, and perhaps more important, is the consideration of practices (of both men and women) that construct the public sphere as masculine.

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