A new publication takes a closer look at various forms of gender-based violence. The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India in collaboration with Coady Institute conducted the participatory research initiative over the course of three-years.
“Gender-based violence: Can a more comprehensive definition lead to better strategies for increasing women’s economic agency?” explores the obstacles women in the informal sector have to overcome to participate as economic producers and the strategies that help them to do so.
Using participatory tools developed with Coady Institute, the research uses 100 case studies of rural and urban informal workers and looks beyond the conventional definition of physical and psychological abuse or harassment. This includes the humiliation and pain associated with women’s experience of poverty that suggests the conventional definition is too limiting.
The grassroots researchers also developed a set of tools for measuring women’s self-reliance—Pagbharta, as they named it. The toolkit adapts, quite innovatively, tools used at Coady, such as the River of Life, MSC, Leaky Bucket and Asset Mapping.
The paper provides an account of the research process and makes the case that women experiencing poverty are subjected to violence in many intersecting forms, all of which inhibit their participation as economic producers. Women in the study spoke about their priorities in terms of addressing the indignities of poverty-as-violence, amplified by gender inequality.
The publication concludes that informal women workers are challenging all forms of violence “through saving, income generating, and asset building they are building personal and interpersonal agency, contributing to the family and to their villages and neighbourhoods and earning respect as economic producers.”
Coady staff member Yogesh Ghore, former Coady staff Alison Mathie, and SEWA staff Mansi Shah, and Megha Desai in collaboration with Coady Institute and Self-Employed Women’s Association, India authored the publication. The Ford Foundation in Delhi and New York funded the study.
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