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INTERNATIONAL LABOUR OFFICE Governing Body |
GB.267/TC/2
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Committee on Technical Cooperation |
TC |
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SECOND ITEM ON THE AGENDA
Strategies to enhance women's employment and income
opportunities: Experience from technical cooperation
Contents
II. The ILO mandate and modalities of action
The ILO mandate on women's employment
ILO modalities of action: An overview
III. Enhancing women's employment and income: Strategies
Wage employment promotion
Self-employment promotion
V. Role of the social partners in project implementation
Appendices
I. Introduction
1. The theme chosen for this assessment -- the enhancement of women's employment and income -- is particularly timely in view of the ILO's commitment to contribute to follow-up on the Platform for Action adopted by the Fourth World Conference on Women.
2. In developing countries, women's employment rates are highly under-rated by current labour force statistical systems, but it is widely recognized that most women are engaged in some type of productive work. Women have been entering the labour market in ever-increasing numbers since the 1980s. Moreover, the proportion of female-headed households and families dependent on women's incomes has been rising. In most developing countries women's employment, in contrast to that of men, is concentrated in a narrow range of occupations traditionally perceived as suitable for women, and in jobs which are low paid, unskilled or low skilled, casual or temporary in terms of tenure, and with low social status. Wage employment opportunities in the formal sector being more limited for women than for men in many countries, women have found work mainly in self-employment and in the informal sector. Although some advances have been attained towards wage equity, women still earn 50 to 80 per cent of men's wages. The disparity can be attributed to job segregation, differences in skill and educational levels and direct forms of discrimination.(1)
3. In other countries, women have had to bear a large share of the burden of economic restructuring and transition processes. With sharp declines in real incomes, two salaries per household have become very important. However, women have a relatively weak position in the labour market, as shown by higher unemployment rates and the larger female share of part-time work, casual work and home work. In Central and Eastern Europe, for example, labour force participation rates -- although they have remained high for active-age women -- may well decrease as child-care facilities are reduced. In addition, women's concentration in professions such as teaching, nursing and social care has tied them to the public sector much more than men. Women also tend to be slower in shifting to private sector employment, partly due to family obligations.(2)
4. The ILO has been an active partner in the global search for more effective policies and strategies through several means of action, namely, research, standard setting, advisory services and technical cooperation. Policy and institutional reform is necessary to create an overall environment for equality of treatment and opportunity between men and women at work. At the same time, there is the need for direct support programmes targeted at specific sectors of workers, especially those that suffer from social marginalization and exclusion. Technical cooperation activities have provided support to policy and institutional reform and to directly targeted assistance. They offer a rich source of practical experience to guide the design and implementation of specific policies as well as the development of appropriate legal frameworks and action programmes.
5. This paper reviews a sample of the women-specific projects and women-specific components of general projects that specifically aimed at the improvement of women's employment and income opportunities. It does not cover the experience of general projects that addressed both male and female working populations.(3) Three criteria were used in the selection of projects, namely, that the last evaluation report on the project was dated not earlier than 1992, thus giving current or fairly recent experience; that adequate and relevant information could be obtained from the evaluation reports; and that the major geographical regions were represented by at least one project.
6. Out of a preliminary list of 28 selected ILO projects, 13 were retained for review in this paper. The final sample includes five national projects and one regional project in Asia, two national projects and two regional projects in Africa, and one national project each in the Middle East, Latin America and Eastern Europe. The technical fields covered were vocational training, women's employment and development policies, entrepreneurship development, cooperative development, active labour policies, the protection of indigenous populations, and working conditions. Appendices I and II list the 13 projects reviewed and the reports from which data and evaluative material were drawn.
7. This paper assesses the strategies based on actual experience in the sample of technical cooperation projects. The assessment looks into the overall impact of the projects in terms of three major evaluation concerns, namely, relevance, effectiveness and sustainability. Did the strategies address actual needs and the social-economic situation of the target groups and partner institutions? Did the strategies result in economic and social benefits for women, and did they improve the institutional and policy environment surrounding women's employment? Will the benefits be sustained in the future? As is often the case in technical cooperation activities, the efficiency aspects of the projects were not assessed on account of the lack of detailed information. The fourth and fifth sections focus respectively on the organization of women and the role of the social partners. The lessons learned from the projects and general conclusions are presented in the last two sections.
II. The ILO mandate and modalities of action
The ILO mandate on women's employment
8. The ILO mandate to promote equality of opportunity and treatment between men and women at work, which is universally recognized as a basic human right, is the institutional guide to ILO technical cooperation activities on women's employment. The ILO's Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention, 1958 (No. 111), sets the overall framework. The Equal Remuneration Convention, 1951 (No. 100), the Social Policy (Basic Aims and Standards) Convention, 1962 (No. 117), the Workers with Family Responsibilities Convention, 1981 (No. 156), the Employment Policy Convention, 1964 (No. 122), and the Human Resources Development Convention, 1975 (No. 142), contain other principles on equality between men and women in employment and training. Also of relevance to technical cooperation activities relating to women's employment are the resolutions adopted by the International Labour Conference concerning rural employment promotion (75th Session); self-employment promotion (77th Session); social protection and the alleviation of unemployment and poverty (80th Session); and the social dimension of structural adjustment and transition to a market economy (80th Session).
ILO modalities of action: An overview
9. The modalities of action that the ILO has developed to improve women's employment may be grouped into two broad categories: those that promote wage employment and those that promote self-employment. Of the 28 projects scanned initially for this paper, only three had the enhancement of wage employment opportunities for women as a primary objective. The rest focused on self-employment. These modalities of action often seek change at two levels: among workers (direct support), and among policy-makers, planners, institutions and in the policies themselves (institutional development and policy reform).
10. Strategies to promote wage employment have been identified throughout the ILO's work on employment. They involve one or a combination of policy areas such as education and the training of workers; vocational counselling and job placement services; sectoral policies and programmes to expand the labour absorptive capacity of the economy; labour legislation that removes practices that discriminate against the employment of specific social groups such as women; and child-care services that help workers with family responsibilities to engage in productive work. These policy areas are primarily concerned with the quantity of jobs. Another policy area of wage employment promotion strategies is the improvement of the terms and conditions of wage employment. It focuses on the quality of jobs. The projects reviewed for this paper that were concerned with women's wage employment dealt only with training and the improvement of working conditions.
11. The modalities of action to enhance self-employment were discussed in detail in the paper on the working poor presented to the Committee on Technical Cooperation at the Governing Body's 261st Session in November 1994.(4) Briefly, the strategies involve one or a combination of policy areas: (i) entrepreneurship development, which covers business and production-oriented training and extension services; (ii) financial services, including credit and savings schemes; and (iii) secured access to and the development of productive assets, such as land and production facilities. Most technical cooperation projects targeting the poor and women incorporate the strengthening of grass-roots organizations of the target group both as an operational strategy to build up productive activities and as a desirable end in itself, thus enhancing the social protection of women and contributing to their empowerment in society.
III. Enhancing women's employment and income: Strategies
Wage employment promotion
12. Among the projects reviewed for this paper, two major directions for the enhancement of women's wage employment can be discerned: the improvement of the working conditions of women workers in industry, which was the objective of the Indonesian project on the Improvement of women workers' welfare and working conditions; and the reform of training institutions, the focus of the Philippine project on the Diversification of women's occupations through training and the Pakistan project on the Strengthening of secretarial training for women.
13. The Indonesian project on women workers' working conditions used a training instrument developed by the ILO called Workplace Improvements in Small Enterprises (WISE), which had previously been tested in other countries. WISE was designed to help enterprise owners and managers, trade union leaders, workers and labour inspectors identify low-cost measures to raise productivity and improve working conditions. The project was the first to apply WISE specifically to improving women's working conditions in the formal sector. It did this by studying the needs of women workers in industries employing a high concentration of women and using the findings to develop training modules on working conditions. Unfortunately, for political reasons, the project's donor withdrew development assistance to Indonesia one year before the project was scheduled to end. The project was therefore not able to test the effectiveness of its strategy or training tools.
14. The projects on skills training in the Philippines and Pakistan sought to bring women into new non-traditional or male-dominated occupational areas. The Philippine project focused on a broad range of mainly industrial skills; that in Pakistan on the secretarial profession which, unlike in most other countries, is male-dominated in Pakistan owing to cultural restrictions on women's paid employment outside the home. In the Philippines, change was sought at the national policy level with the development of strategies and a model for integrating women and national staff and trainers knowledgeable in gender-based training strategies into mainstream vocational training. The Pakistan project aimed at a more practical target by establishing a professional (diploma) course in modern office management within polytechnic institutes for women.
15. With the aim of ensuring that training was oriented to the real jobs market, both projects attempted, initially, to establish advisory boards involving representatives of the private business sector to guide the pilot training activities, but none of them functioned as planned. They then resorted to creating less formal arrangements, which were more successful in matching job requirements to the acquired skills. Both projects included work experience in the private business sector in their training programmes, which was effective in giving trainees practical skills and in establishing links with employers. The Pakistan project also closely involved employers and managers in designing the office management course. The Philippine project, on the other hand, only involved them in on-the-job training: it did not undertake a pre-project study of the market demand for skills, and restricted training to an existing industrial skills programme for which there was very limited demand. Moreover, despite clear indications that changes were necessary, it made no attempt to shift away from its standardized industrial courses or to integrate women into the range of training programmes offered by the national training institution. These shortcomings constituted major flaws in the Philippine project's strategy.
16. The number of women trained was way below target in both projects. In the Philippines, half of the trainees failed the trade test and very few found employment after training, mainly owing to the lack of vacancies. However, some qualitative results were obtained. In the Pakistan project, the course for women in office management was the first of its kind. Although it had not been approved by the Ministry of Education when it ended, it had raised the social prestige of women working in the secretarial profession. In the Philippine project, the first concrete step towards integrating women into a male-dominated training programme had been taken, and awareness among planners, trainers and employers raised. The links with employers in the private sector were also major achievements in both projects.
17. At the end of the projects, the institutional factors that had hampered project implementation remained, putting the sustainability of the results at risk. Throughout the Pakistan project, support from the collaborating government agency was weak, and counterpart resources for the pilot centres were inadequate. Upon completion, the budgetary resources needed to continue the course, pay the teaching staff and maintain the new facilities had not been secured. As for the Philippine project, the most serious institutional constraints were the frequent changes in government personnel responsible for project implementation, the inability of the training system to adapt its standardized courses, and the low capacity of the national training institution to undertake training needs assessment.
Self-employment promotion
18. Of the ten projects in the sample that promoted self-employment, two were single-faceted, that is to say, they addressed only one problem facing women, and opted for a strategy in only one policy area. The project in the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, Plan of action for women's employment during the transition to a market economy system in the CSFR, helped women at risk of losing their jobs in the public sector. Instructors from existing district training centres all over the country were trained to run the business courses. The women's component of the Niger cooperative project, Promotion et formation de cooperatives dans le Département de Zinder, focused on poor women's access to credit. It adopted a group-based strategy and organized women into savings and credit groups which managed revolving credit funds set up by the project.
19. The CSFR project provided a specific two-year service which bore positive results. After a year of full-scale operations, some 70 to 77 per cent of trainees claimed that the training course had significantly improved their employment and business situation. Among those who had launched a small business, the rate of failure was very low, and the use of borrowed capital was greater than among small business owners in the population at large. Unemployment among the project participants was cut almost by half after the training course. In view of these positive results, the project's tripartite committee proposed that the regional advisory centres for small business development in the Czech Republic should continue the project's activities.
20. In the Niger project, the revolving credit funds (9 to 14 million FCFA between 1989 and 1995 -- US$17,341 to US$26,974 -- US$1 = 519 FCFA) allowed women to undertake their own income-generating activities, notably livestock raising, petty trading and micro food processing. These activities were the women's sole or major source of income which was critical to household subsistence and over which they had control. Weaknesses in the groups' management of credit funds reduced the women's potential benefits from the funds, indicating a need for intensified organization-building activities. By mid-1995, it became clear that they also needed more literacy education and technical support to augment the impact of credit on their businesses.
21. In contrast, the other eight projects adopted a multifaceted and integrated approach: they intervened in many policy areas affecting women's self-employment. The regional project on Action to assist rural women in Zimbabwe and the United Republic of Tanzania provided technical and credit support to women's income-earning activities. The Asian regional project on Women workers in the new putting-out system in Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines adopted a broad and integrated strategy of economic, social and organizational intervention, adapted to the diverse situations pertaining to homeworkers in each country. This covered entrepreneurship development in Thailand and the organization of homeworkers for policy advocacy in the Philippines. The two Indian projects on Wasteland development through women's organizations in West Bengal and Gujarat aimed to increase poor landless women's incomes by enabling them to gain access to land and make productive use of it. The project in Egypt on Productive activities for women settlers in Upper Egypt addressed two problems faced by women settlers -- the shortage of employment alternatives and the lack of influence over development activities in their settlements -- primarily by setting up nine production centres. The objective of the project in Togo on the Organization and training of women in pottery handicrafts in Kouvé was to raise the income of female potters mainly by improving production processes and organization. The regional project in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana on Improved livelihood for disabled women aimed to improve public perceptions of women with disabilities, open up opportunities for women's participation in economic activities and strengthen national and subregional institutions' capacity to integrate disabled women into mainstream programmes.
22. In Bolivia, increasingly deficient agricultural production had impoverished the ethnic communities and caused significant out-migration from the rural areas. The project on Cultural rehabilitation and the development of self-managed workshops in the Jalq'a area aimed to address these problems by improving the income level of two major ethnic groups, the Jalq'as and Tarabucos, by making the weaving of "axsu" (a traditional textile originally woven for the household) a viable alternative source of income.
23. There were two main reasons for adopting the group organization of women as a common strategy in eight out of ten self-employment promoting projects. First, this enabled the women to pool and share resources such as labour, savings, tools, workshops and meeting premises; to handle some aspects of the business collectively, such as the purchase of raw materials, storage, quality control and the marketing of produce; and to have access to a credit facility, land and other assets, which would not have been possible for them individually. Secondly, women's groups were formed for a long-term social and political purpose, namely, to sustain women's control over the productive activities supported by the project to enable women to build up assets under their control, and to strengthen women's negotiating power with authorities and other institutions for services, land, better prices, raw materials, policy reforms, etc.; and to initiate future development activities on their own.
24. Overall, several trends may be discerned from the above projects. First, training in technical skills and in small business management, combined with technical advisory and extension services, were a core element. Secondly, the development of credit services was not always prominent, although in several strategies the organization of informal savings and credit schemes among women was undertaken as a secondary measure. Training in basic literacy and numeracy was almost always essential on account of the very low educational level among poor women in the developing regions. Finally, child-care and health-care education and services were necessary in order to alleviate women's household burden and to facilitate their participation in productive work.
25. A number of the projects sought to create a more supportive institutional infrastructure for women's employment in two main ways, first by retraining the extension workers of governmental and non-governmental organizations as dynamic agents at the grass-roots level who would continue providing advisory services to women in micro and small business development and livelihood opportunities in general; secondly, by enhancing the capacity of certain national institutions to design programmes and policies promoting women's self-employment. In a few projects, policy and legal reforms were also sought. Others raised public awareness of women's economic role through multimedia information dissemination, which was important in creating a more favourable social environment for women's employment.
26. The paramount question in this assessment was whether the projects were effective in bringing about concrete economic and social benefits for their target groups. Two types of economic benefits can de identified: the women's increased capacity to generate an income, and higher incomes. The female potters in the Togo project were able to reduce product breakage during processing by 8.7 per cent and to improve the quality of their products, which sold at higher prices on the market than those of other potters. The women's groups in the Zimbabwe project registered progress in terms of quantitative and qualitative indicators in business management and performance. They showed more cost-effective use of existing equipment and higher and stabilized production levels, and ensured better product quality, regular supply of raw material, lower production costs, adequate bookkeeping, and a better understanding of financial management and use of multiple marketing channels and methods. Members of the Chiang Mai Homenet (a homeworkers' organization formed with project assistance) in Thailand strengthened their position as independent craftswomen-entrepreneurs with improved product design and quality, sales bazaars, better assessments of markets, better prices for raw materials and product diversification.
27. By the end of the Egyptian project, the women settlers in the production centres were undertaking a range of productive activities (such as bee-keeping and honey production, weaving, and dyeing of yarns and cloths), several of which were new to the women. They were using modern methods and equipment. For the first time, women were managing various aspects of a business. As a result of project assistance in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana, a number of micro businesses were established by women and groups of women with disabilities. In India, women involved in the Gujarat wasteland development project set up tree nurseries as a new source of income. The project in Bolivia succeeded in creating a market for the axsu cloth, which has become an additional source of income for the Jalq'as and Tarabucos. The number of traditional axsu weavers rose from 340 in 1992 to 500 in 1996. In 1995, 30 per cent of the weavers' production was rated of high quality. The weavers learned to reorient their axsu textiles to market demand and to assess their quality and monetary value.
28. The results of the cooperative project in Niger showed how credit services could considerably boost women's productive capacity. In the Tanzanian project on rural women, the revolving loan fund enabled women farmers to buy in bulk and hire equipment and labour to increase their maize yields. It also enabled other women to start up non-farm activities such as timber production and maize and fertilizer trading. In 1995, the Chiang Mai Homenet was able to set up 15 group savings schemes with total savings of 104,446 baht (US$4,161; US$1 = 25.10 baht) and revolving credit funds of 124,000 baht. In the Philippines, the PATAMABA (a national organization of homeworkers formed with project assistance) set up 28 income-generating activities with revolving loan funds from the project and other institutions. These activities were designed to make homeworkers' groups less dependent on subcontractors. The credit fund of the council of women's societies within the West Bengal wasteland development project financed activities such as paddy processing, rope making, pottery, vegetable cultivation, weaving and livestock raising.
29. Rights to use 346 acres of wasteland allowed the poor women participating in the West Bengal project to create new sources of livelihood. Most of the wastelands were turned into arjun and asan tree plantations for tasar silkworm cocoon rearing. Other land-based economic activities such as tree nurseries were also taken up. Land development, plantation and maintenance work provided women with short-term wage employment under the government's employment creation programmes.
30. The ultimate litmus test of the strategies' success must be increased incomes at the individual and household levels. This was harder to achieve than enhancing the beneficiaries' capacity to undertake a productive activity or to improve their productivity. While women's incomes increased in some cases, the gain was not always significant. In the Zimbabwe project on rural women, the majority of women's groups improved their production after two years of intensive technical assistance, but only a minority (eight out of 32) were able to share profits and increase members' cash incomes by the end of the first phase of the project. No group working collectively to produce one commodity was able to count their labour as a business cost. In the Tanzanian project, loan borrowers carrying out individual activities did not calculate the cost of their labour either. However, all of the project's first 74 borrowers increased their production and realized an income from the sale of fattened pigs and maize crops. In most cases, however, the gain was not in cash but in increased food stocks for family consumption. Those women who took up non-farm activities (e.g. timber production, maize trading, kiosks) did so well that, for the first time, they had cash flowing in on a daily or weekly basis. In the African regional project for disabled women, income-generating activities operated at levels ranging from subsistence to self-sufficiency, requiring further assistance to generate profits. Although they were not yet financially autonomous as a result of the project or government assistance, the nine production centres of women settlers in Upper Egypt were able to cover, to varying degrees, the cost of raw materials and their members' labour out of sales revenues. Payments for labour input were irregular and meagre in several production units.
31. Since 1991, better product quality, a higher market price and improved sales have enabled female potters in the Togo project to earn 1,000 FCFA more per week than those who did not participate in the project. In West Bengal, tasar cocoon rearing provided work and income for 259 women. Between 1991-92, they were employed for 13,807 days. Their total sales income amounted to 177,970 rupees (US$5,114; US$1 = 34.80 rupees). The average income per day per member was 13 rupees. Possession of land assets and new wage employment in land development increased demand for labour, pushed up local daily wage levels, and reduced by 80 per cent women's seasonal migration to other areas. In addition, women in West Bengal and Gujarat increased supplies of fuel wood, fodder and vegetables for household use. In 1995, the Chiang Mai Homenet members realized additional income from bazaar sales of between 255,250 baht and 464,300 baht and from sales orders of about 5,184,360 baht. In the Bolivian project, the sales revenue from axsu rose from US$7,600 in 1989 to US$541,700 in 1995. The net income of the weavers and the communal workshops amounted to US$393,600 over a seven-year period. Weavers received 53 per cent of the price of each unit produced. Much of the additional income was invested in agriculture, education and health care. Male seasonal out-migration decreased in the women weavers' households.
32. By the time these projects ended, most activities had yet to attain unqualified viability or attain a profitable and commercial level. Only time and ex-post evaluations can provide conclusive answers. Nevertheless, final evaluations found that most of the projects had created the conditions necessary to sustain the productive activities which had been selected on the basis of the women's actual and potential skills and market feasibility. They had enhanced productive and business management skills among the women, and provided them with a better appreciation of the importance of orienting their production towards actual market demand. The women had been organized so that their combined resources and mutual support would continue to improve their activities. Links had been forged between the women and women's groups and the extension services of governmental agencies and NGOs. Technical extension and advisory services for women had been improved, and broader networks had been set up between governmental and non-governmental institutions to support women's productive activities.
33. In addition to strengthening self-employed women's income-generating capacity, some projects also expanded the social protection for women. This may be broadly defined as working conditions, legal standards for conditions of employment and work, formal social insurance systems, and non-formal social insurance schemes. The Togo project for women potters was a good example of how improvements in small artisans' production methods can have positive effects on both income and working conditions, and how working conditions affect the efficiency and viability of production. By opening up the clay quarry, the project made the extraction of clay safer, as well as less arduous and time consuming. By improving production methods and upgrading workshop facilities, it provided the women with a more comfortable working environment and reduced the time they devoted to collecting wood. Moreover, the potters in the project area who had not participated in the project benefited indirectly by having been made aware of these better methods.
34. The Asian regional project on homeworkers viewed workers' protection as closely linked to the economic viability and social desirability of home work, and thus to employment promotion. It had to determine which to address first: income and productivity improvement or workers' protection. Much depended on the actual socio-economic context of homeworkers, their immediate concerns, and the capabilities of institutions willing to address the issues. The Thai NGOs and homeworkers' groups focused, first, on improving workers' incomes through small entrepreneurship development, and then on workers' protection. The Indonesian partner institutions saw occupational safety and health and subcontracting arrangements as their best entry points. Legal measures to improve homeworkers' protection and their inclusion in formal social security systems were difficult to achieve within the project's seven-year time frame. But it showed that change could begin with small-scale pilot actions. For example, collaborating NGOs in Indonesia were able to raise some piece-rates, introduce written contracts, improve workshop conditions, and educate homeworkers in occupational health and safety.
35. Higher incomes and pooled resources made it possible for women to set up their own social services and social insurance schemes. The availability of these services enhanced their chances to engage in productive work. The wasteland development projects in West Bengal and Gujarat demonstrated how the organization of women, using pooled resources and supported by existing governmental and non-governmental programmes, enabled poor women to set up essential social welfare services such as child-care centres, consumer shops, adult education centres, primary health-care services and small multi-purpose credit schemes. The weavers' associations in the Bolivian project set up basic commodity stores. Partner NGOs of the homeworkers' project in Indonesia set up group-based savings, health funds and funeral schemes, and the homeworkers' groups in Thailand experimented with credit schemes for security against sickness, old age and death.
36. Multifaceted project strategies succeeded in bringing about an improved institutional and policy environment to promote women's employment. In several projects, community-based extension and field workers of government agencies and NGOs in project areas demonstrated new orientations and skills in helping women pursue their productive activities and in continuing the project strategies. In almost all projects, links were established with governmental and non-governmental institutions for financial support, training and technical expertise. The critical question was whether or not these institutional support structures were sustainable. Unfortunately, there were no conclusive indications. Government networks of extension workers were permanent structures with regular budgetary allocations, but they almost always suffered from a lack of staff, transport facilities, field allowances and other resources. NGOs proved effective partners because they had flexible administrative and operating structures, but most of them faced shortages of funds and were largely dependent on external grants. Only a few NGOs were well-established and had their own financial arrangements. These institutional issues do not affect women alone, but are general constraints affecting the sustainability of all development projects.
37. Strong women's grass-roots organizations that were formed with the support of project activities will play a crucial role in sustaining support for women's economic activities. This review has shown that these organizations can help advocate and negotiate for easier access to extension or advisory services from governments and NGOs. They also enable women to own and control resources. The samities and Nari Bikash Sangha (Women's Development Council) in West Bengal have many acres of privately donated land under their control and are managing savings and credit funds. The Agricultural Cooperative for Food Security in Kom Ombo, Upper Egypt -- the first all-women's cooperative in the country -- provides the institutional framework for women to manage the nine production centres. Women's organizations give women an instrument through which to participate and be heard in decision-making processes. The PATAMABA in the Philippines brought homeworkers to the consultation table on legal provisions for homeworkers and on social security issues. The Nari Bikash Sangha in West Bengal was invited to strengthen women's representation in local forest protection committees and to represent women at various panchayat and district level consultations.
38. In 1992 the Egyptian Parliament earmarked 19 million Egyptian pounds (US$5,637,982; US$1 = E3.37) for the period 1993-97 for a national project entitled Productive activities for women settlers in the new lands, which replicates the project on women settlers in Upper Egypt. The First Conference on the Participation of Rural Women in the Development of New Communities in New Lands, held in 1994 in Aswan (Egypt), endorsed the development approach of the project. In Zimbabwe, the small business development training programme of the rural women's project was tested nationwide and used in the training of district and ward field staff by provincial training officers of the Ministry of National Affairs, Employment Creation and Cooperatives. Perhaps a more significant achievement was the commitment of women's grass-roots organizations to continuing the projects' strategies. By 1995, the PATAMABA in the Philippines and the Chiang Mai Homenet in Thailand had drawn up plans to continue their work without project assistance, which will end in 1996. Other NGOs collaborating with the homeworkers' project were generally optimistic about pursuing the work they had initiated with project support, but their efforts required consolidation and alternative funding after the completion of the project.
39. Many projects were successful in bringing issues to the level of national policy debate. Policy reforms, however, have been very slow in coming. The Philippines Department of Labor and Employment involved homeworkers' representatives in policy discussions on social security and employment reforms. It also issued a departmental order clarifying Labour Code provisions on industrial home work, but whether the order can be enforced has yet to be determined.
40. All the projects reviewed for this paper, except for that in the Czech and Slovak Republic, were extended -- with or without additional external budgetary resources -- to complete their work and ensure sustainability. The original projects' time frames, usually three or four years, never matched the time required to achieve the objectives. In most cases, by the time extensions expired, only part of the immediate objectives had been achieved. This situation can be attributed to the multifaceted and complex character of the objectives and strategies. In most projects limited resources meant that the different facets of the strategies could not be implemented at the same time or with the same degree of attention and expertise envisaged during project design. The large amount of time required by projects to obtain the expected results can also be explained by the fact that the projects sought not only to produce physical outputs for use by the beneficiaries, but also to help bring about change in social and institutional processes.
IV. Organization of women
41. The most critical and difficult aspect of the organization-building components of the projects reviewed was ensuring the financial and political autonomy of the women's groups. The projects in West Bengal, Gujarat, Bolivia, Egypt and Niger, as well as the Philippine component of the Asian homeworkers' project, drew attention to some of the most important elements. These included a participatory methodology encouraging groups to analyse their problems and identify solutions for themselves; developing leaders from among the women; fostering networking among the women's groups; and giving women's leaders direct negotiating experience with local authorities and other entities in the community.
42. A legal identity better protects an organization's rights, assets and functions. The choice of the appropriate institutional and legal form determines to a large extent the future role of the organization, the nature of support it would be able to obtain from other national institutions, its visibility and autonomy. The Egyptian project on women settlers searched for the most appropriate framework for the women's groups which managed the centres. It involved considerations as to which national institutional structure would place the women's organization in the mainstream of technical and financial support after project assistance and ensure its independence, and as to which structure would be acceptable to the important actors in the women's immediate social environment. The search involved discussions among the women themselves and negotiations with other relevant social actors. A women's cooperative was set up that satisfied the women's desire for their own independent organization, met the concerns of the other actors involved, and placed the women's organization in the mainstream of support from the national cooperative structure.
V. Role of the social partners in project implementation
43. Among the three major social partners, governments played the greatest role both as the primary collaborating agency in project management and implementation and as intermediary institutions extending direct support services to the target group at the local level. Trade unions and employers' organizations were involved in project supervision only in the CSFR project on women public employees, which formed a tripartite committee on women's employment to guide the project. All three social partners actively participated in the subregional and national workshops and seminars of the regional project on homeworkers. However, trade unions and employers' organizations were less active in undertaking follow-up pilot actions to develop direct support strategies aimed at enhancing homeworkers' employment and social protection. A Thai trade union (TESTU) organized homeworkers in the shoe industry in Bangkok. An employers' organization in the ceramics industry was one of several institutions that helped organize and train homeworkers in an industrial village in Thailand. Employers were involved in designing the course on office management in the Pakistan training project, and in providing on-the-job training in the projects in Pakistan and the Philippines.
44. Most projects had to choose intermediary institutions that could facilitate and undertake the direct support activities at grass-roots level. The choice of the institution depended on whether or not it had community-based workers, experience in working at the grass-roots level, expertise, existing programmes dealing with women or programmes into which the project could be integrated. Intermediary institutions played a crucial role in providing front-line services to the women, organizing them and soliciting technical and financial support and credit services for them and channelling it to them. They also mediated between the target group and local authorities and other interest groups. In the Bolivian project, the NGO provided a marketing outlet where weavers could obtain the best prices. In some projects, intermediary institutions were government agencies (e.g. projects in the United Republic of Tanzania, Zimbabwe, CSFR). In others, they were civic organizations, professional development organizations, and research and academic institutions (e.g. projects in West Bengal and Gujarat, Bolivia, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Zambia, Botswana and Zimbabwe). In the two cases mentioned above, a trade union and an employers' organization played the role of intermediary institution. National grass-roots organizations representing women (SEWA and KABAPA) helped implement the wasteland development project in Gujarat and the homeworkers' project in the Philippines. An important development from the point of view of sustainability is when the women's target group matures into the intermediary institution and assumes much of the direct support role from the original partner institution, which actually occurred in the projects in West Bengal and the Philippines.
VI. Lessons learned
45. The conditions that increase the likelihood that women's productive activities and economic benefits will be sustained in the long term are: enhanced productive and business management skills among women; the orientation of production towards actual market demand; the choice of productive activities based on their actual and potential skills and on market feasibility; the organization of women, so that with combined resources they can continue to improve their activities; links between women and extension services of governments and NGOs; better quality of extension and advisory services at the local level; broader networks among governmental and non-governmental institutions to support women's productive work.
46. There is value in beginning assistance to activities that women are already pursuing or are at best familiar with, provided these are economically feasible. Non-traditional activities tend to require a great deal of training. Moreover, with increased experience, the women themselves will be best able to spot new business opportunities. Technical and financial support to women's activities should be flexible to cover individual and group activities, depending on women's needs, workload, and the economics of their undertakings. Feasibility studies provide a solid basis for choosing financially rewarding economic activities, but so do many other factors, such as the technical and managerial capacity of the producer-entrepreneur, the ways by which the business unit actually responds to and anticipates opportunities and problems, and the social, economic and political environments influencing employment.
47. The organization of women has proved a very effective strategy in improving women's current activities and creating new income-earning opportunities. By forming groups, women can pool their labour, savings, tools and premises, build up economic assets under their control, set up schemes to meet common business needs such as marketing and quality control, establish their own social services and credit facilities, and negotiate with authorities and institutions for access to services and resources. The project's approach must above all be participatory, encouraging decision-making and leadership to come from the women themselves so as to ensure that their organizations become self-reliant and independent in the long term.
48. Strengthening women's income-earning capacity can, in many ways, expand social protection for women. Improvements in the production methods of self-employed women will most likely enhance their working conditions and raise income. Better working conditions improve the economic viability and social desirability of a productive activity. Higher incomes, pooled resources and mutual support make it possible for women to establish their own social services and social insurance schemes, which in turn further enhance their chances of engaging in productive work.
49. Women's self-employment needs reliable technical extension and advisory services. To meet this need, the competence of the front-line extension workers of not just one, but of all relevant institutions at the local level must be enhanced, especially in simple business management and development, and in discerning gender-specific issues affecting women's productive work. However, institutional constraints, which are not gender-specific (mainly limited labour and financial resources) but which are related to a country's political and economic development, will be a major obstacle to women's access to training and extension services, and will have to be addressed at the national policy level.
50. Training must be practical and simple, linked to actual experience, close to women's place of work or residence, and matching their educational level, technical abilities and work schedule. While effective training methods which do not rely solely on literacy and numeracy skills have been developed, improvements in these skills will eventually be required by women to make successful businesses.
51. Standard bank-lending procedures are not accessible to small-scale women's activities, and pose a major constraint to bank-linked credit services. Credit services must be more flexible and innovative to adapt to their economic activities, and must be linked to training in business management and credit use and to technical support. The creation of group-managed credit schemes using flexible and simple credit delivery procedures appear to be the best alternative. Group cohesion and small and homogeneous membership based on existing social ties are prerequisites for successful group-based credit services.
52. Strategies to secure women's access to land require: policy and legislative reform to remove legal constraints affecting women's acquisition of secure land tenure; the organization of women to strengthen their negotiating position with government authorities and interest groups; and an institution outside the target group to act as an intermediary between the women and the government and powerful interest groups when procuring land and technical services.
53. Enhancing women's employment is a social, institutional and economic process which requires not only action by individual women or women's groups, but also reforms of institutions, policies and laws. It may involve changes in socio-cultural practices and in the relationships between the target group and other social groups. Projects need a time frame of at least six years within which to design and implement their strategies.
VII. Concluding remarks
54. The above shows the relative strengths and weaknesses of project strategies to enhance women's wage employment and self-employment. It is not comprehensive, and has relied only on available documents on a sample of projects. Nevertheless, the insights may help in the design of future strategies and projects. While the emphasis on self-employment promotion was relevant and justified, technical cooperation work to develop wage employment promotion strategies and to strengthen national capacities in this area was relatively limited. The three projects that focused on wage employment could only offer possible leads for future work.
55. Projects that aimed to enhance self-employment focused on multifaceted strategies in an effort to address the totality of conditions in which women's economic activities take place. Training and extension services, organizing women and strengthening the capacity of governments and NGOs to provide women with necessary support services were core elements of the strategies. Securing access to credit services was also important but could not bring women's activities to a level of self-reliance alone. In terms of enhancing women's capacities to do productive and remunerative work, and creating more positive institutional support for women's work, the achievements highlighted the most feasible paths to take. But the process requires a longer time frame, diversified expertise and resources. The impact on policy reform was the weakest project result. Follow-up at the policy level may be best done through the advisory services of the ILO, in which case effective links between technical cooperation and advisory work are very important. Multifaceted strategies require more human and financial resources than the single-faceted approach.
56. This thematic assessment paper suggests that employers' and workers' organizations could play a leading role in bringing about the necessary improvements in equality of treatment for male and female workers in their access to employment and income-earning opportunities. This would require their greater involvement and more active participation in national programmes and projects pursuing such aims.
Geneva, 25 September 1996.
1 For a detailed discussion of problems relating to womens employment, see ILO: Gender, poverty and employment: Turning capabilities into entitlements, ILO, Geneva, 1995.
2 See Liba Paukert, Economic transitionaand womens employment in four Central European countries, 1989-94, ILO, Geneva, 1995.
3 Women-specific projects and women-specific components within a general project are two broad ways of addressing womens distinct interests and enhancing their participation in technical cooperation activities. "Mainstreaming" women -- incorporating special strategies and operational arrangements within general projects to ensure that a general project is as accessible and relevant to women as to men -- is another way of promoting equality between men and women. While there are greater efforts in technical cooperation activities to "mainstream" womens interests in general projects, the methods for achieving this are still in a developmental stage, and experience specifically relevant to women is not always adequately documented.
4 ILO, Review of projects concerned with the working poor, Committee on Technical Cooperation, Governing Body, GB.261/TC/3/4, Geneva, Nov. 1994.
List of projects reviewed
- IND/84/MO2/DAN: Wasteland development through women's organizations -- West Bengal.
- IND/87/MO3/NET: Wasteland development through women's organizations -- Gujarat.
- RAS/91/M14/DAN: Women workers in the new putting-out system -- Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines.
- RAF/88/M15/FRG and RAF/92/M18/FRG: Improved livelihood for disabled women -- Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana.
- RAF/86/MO2/NET and ZIM/92/MO1/NET: Action to assist rural women -- United Republic of Tanzania, Zimbabwe.
- TOG/85/WO1: Togo -- organisation et formation des femmes dans l'artisanat de poterie à Kouvé.
- NER/90/MO2/NET and NER/93/MO1/NET: Promotion et formation de cooperatives dans le département de Zinder.
- EGY/83/MO4/NET: Productive activities for women settlers in Upper Egypt.
- BOL/88/007: Recuperación cultural y desarrollo de talleres autogestionarios en el área de los Jalq'a -- Bolivia.
- CZE/90/MO2/NET: Plan of action for women's employment during the transition to a market economy system in the CSFR.
- PHI/88/MO2/NET: Diversification of women's occupations through training.
- PAK/84/MO2/NET: Strengthening of secretarial training for women -- Pakistan.
- INS/89/MO3/NET: Improvement of women workers' welfare and working conditions.
Reference documents
Wasteland development through women's organizations (West Bengal, India); Terminal report, Geneva, 1995, 57 L. (IND/84/M02/DAN).
Wasteland development through women's organizations (West Bengal, India); Final evaluation report, Geneva, 1995, 1 V. (IND/84/M02/DAN).
Wasteland development through women's organization (Gujarat, India); Terminal report, Geneva, 1994, 63 L. (IND/87/M03/NET).
Report of the final evaluation mission; Wasteland development through women's organization (Gujarat, India), Geneva, July 1994, 1 V. (IND/87/M03/NET).
Report on the final evaluation; Women workers in the new putting-out system in Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines -- Phase II, Geneva, 1995, 101 L. (RAS/91/M14/DAN).
Improved livelihood for disabled women; A regional promotional programme for southern African countries; Final evaluation, Harare, Jan. 1994, 1 V. (RAF/92/M18/FRG).
Regional Africa: Improved livelihood for disabled women; A regional promotional programme for southern African countries; Project findings and recommendations, Geneva, 1995, 41 pp. (RAF/88/M15/FRG).
Action to assist rural women; lessons from Africa; Case-studies of four projects in Zimbabwe, United Republic of Tanzania, Niger and Guinea, Geneva, 1995, 1 V. (RAF/86/M02/NET) (ZIM/92/M01/NET).
Action to assist rural women; Report on the tripartite evaluation, Geneva, Feb. 1996, 1 V. (ZIM/92/MO1/NET).
United Republic of Tanzania: Action to assist rural women; Report of the final evaluation, Geneva, Sep. 1993, 1 V. (RAF/86/MO2/NET).
Togo: Organisation et formation des femmes dans l'artisanat de poterie à Kouvé; Résultats du projet et recommandations en découlant, Genève, 1993, 1 V. (TOG/85/W01).
Projet promotion et formation des cooperatives, Zinder; Rapport final de la phase III, Genève, Jan. 1995, 2 V. (NER/90/MO2/NET).
Niger: Participation des entreprises à caractère coopératif à la sécurité alimentaire et au développement local dans le département de Zinder; Rapport d'évaluation interne et proposition d'adjustment de la phase IV, Genève, 1995, 81 pp. (NER/93/M01/NET).
Halima goes to market; The Kom Ombo story; Lessons from the project; Productive activities for women settlers in Upper Egypt, Geneva, 1996, 52 pp. (EGY/83/M04/NET).
Desarrollo de la Capacidad Productiva y Organizativa de Talleres Autogestionarios -- Jalq'a; Informe y evaluación del Rendimiento del Proyecto, Ginebra, Feb. 1996, 27 pp. (BOL/88/007).
Desarrollo de la Capacidad Productiva y Organizativa de Talleres Autogestionarios -- Jalq'a; Resumen del Informe del Examen Tripartito; Ginebra, Apr. 1996, 6 pp. (BOL/88/007).
Plan of action for women's employment during the transition to a market economy system in the CSFR; project evaluation report, Geneva, Dec. 1992. 16 L. (CZE/90/MO2/NET).
Diversification of women's occupations through training; Draft report of tripartite evaluation mission, Geneva, Feb. 1992, 1 V. (PHI/88/MO2/NET).
Philippines: Diversification of women's occupations through training (demonstration project); Project findings and recommendations, Geneva, 1992, 35 pp. (PHI/88/M02/NET).
Strengthening of secretarial training for women in Pakistan; Tripartite evaluation review, Nov. 1993, 40 pp. (PAK(84/MO2/NET).
Pakistan: Strengthening of secretarial training for women; Project findings and recommendations; Terminal report, Geneva, 1995, 40 pp. (PAK/84/M02/NET).
Improvement of women workers' welfare and working conditions; Draft terminal report, Geneva, June 1992, 1 V. (INS/89/MO3/NET).