Women at Work: Pathways for Dignity and Resilience

Leila: A very good afternoon everyone and a very warm welcome to a new edition of our research futures webinar. My name is Leila Shukrun. I’m Professor of International Law, and Director of the University of Portsmouth’s thematic initiative in democratic citizenship.

Today we are absolutely delighted to welcome our colleague from Delhi and also a former student of the University of Portsmouth, Dr Sutirtha Sahariah, who is today heading the communication and he's also the senior vice president at Sulab International Social Services. While you might not have heard about Sulab, it's a fantastic and extraordinarily large organisation in India which is in particular, and Sutir is going to tell you more, very much involved in water issues, waste management and a number of very important social issues.

Suti's presentation is based on years of journalism and research on issues of gender work and human trafficking, and we are going to address together the concepts of resilience and dignity for a number of women Suti's been working with. Although I have to tell you that Suti's work is going to be published very soon in the format of a book with Routledge, so we're very much looking forward to that and certainly will give you the references to this book at the end of the conversation.So without further ado, Suti the floor is yours. 

Suti: Well thank you for this introduction. Good evening to everyone from Delhi. As Leila just mentioned I work here for an international NGO called Sula International which was set up in 1970, and the organisation’s in the sanitation sector. It’s a gandhian organisation and the whole idea of a Sula sanitation movement was to use toilet or sanitation for the emancipation of women, so this year the organisation has completed 50 years and broadly we work across areas like sanitation, gender, water and waste management.

Coming back to the topic today even before I start, you know that Leila has just mentioned that I worked as a journalist in the past. I worked for a number of international uh broadcasters and publications like the Guardian,  the BBC, did dutch, public radio and television.

So while I was working as a journalist the key issues that I covered across south Asia was human trafficking, gender violence and development across the region. And my experiences of covering women's issues gave me an in-depth understanding and appreciation of the enormous challenges that women face and also their contribution to society at various levels. 

So even before I begin today I would like to pay my utmost respect to those incredible women, without whose contribution I would not be making this presentation today. 

So this presentation is a story of their perseverance and their determination to win in life. 

Research Background [3:30]

And talking about resilience today - uh just a second - so just last week across the Eastern India and Nepal we celebrated a very important festival,  it's an animal festival called Durga Puja.  And as you can see in the image, the Goddess durga is a symbol of war strength and protection, and she is known to be combating evils and demonic forces that threatens peace and prosperity. You can see here that she is battling a demon here and she's a power of a symbol of women's power and especially in Nepal and Eastern India this festival is really, really significant. 

But at the time of COVID-19 we have been talking a lot about how the virus, the pandemic, has disproportionately impacted the lives of poor women, women who work in the informal sector as domestic workers, women who work in the sex and entertainment industry. 

So this image that you see in front of you is an image from one of the venues in Valcutta where they depicted the plight of migrant women. Many of these women were employed in cities and after the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown they became jobless and many of them walked thousands of home. 

So in the face of this oppression, exploitation and loss of job these women have been fighters and they have been to they have been able to demonstrate a great degree of resilience. So that is essentially what I'm going to talk about today how women will resilience, resilience against exploitation and violence. And just to give you a bit of a background about this research - the research that I'm going to talk about was actually a DFID commissioned study, and University of Portsmouth under Professor Thompson Bradley was the academic lead.

So the DFID commission study wanted to explore how approaches to women’s economic empowerment can tackle violence at the same time. And during the course of this study, and as a part of my phd, I explored the pathways of how we may be resilience to violence. And the group that I studied are the women who are kind of employed in the informal entertainment sector, or the sex industry in Nepal. And most of them work in two tourist destinations - the Kathmandu, the capital, and Tamil. 

Now this is all the growing sectors in the sense that in South Asia and Southeast Asia, the entertainment sector which is linked to the hospitality and tourism makes up to three to four percent of the GDP for some countries like Thailand and Indonesia and it's going rapidly even in India. And just to give an idea of their background, because my focus of this presentation is mainly on India and

Nepal, we talk about women's labour force participation. India, which is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, it also has one of the lowest women labour forced participation - it is somewhere around 23 percent but after the pandemic it's going to be a bit lower than this. 

Nepal however sees a very high percentage of women working in the unorganised sector. This is primarily because Nepal also exports labour mainly across middle east and other countries so the feminisation of agriculture a lot of women are kind of engaged in agriculture. But in both the countries women are over represented in sectors such as domestic work, construction work, beauty and wellness industry, which is also the entertainment industry and sex work, and following the pandemic and the lockdown these sectors have seen massive losses of livelihood.

Coming to the research framework, and the examples that I'm going to give you today, it’s based on an in-depth qualitative study of 30 women who work, who are presently employed in the sex and entertainment industry in Kathmandu, and also based on two focus group studies consisting of seven women each. 

So while studying or this group of women it was important to find out what are the causes, or what influences the decision to join this very vulnerable and exploitative sector. So the study was divided into two parts - one was to really understand what happened just before the point they joined this sector, so early life and migration - why actually they migrated to the city. Did they face any kind of violence as they were growing up? So a lot of questions were around that. Also about, after joining the sector and one of the biggest reasons why they joined the sector is to earn an income - so a lot of questions were around how does income change the status quo - do they have a decision making power, do they have control over the income.

Questions are also asked around intersectional features for example - in the unregulated market, sex industry otherwise, there's a high degree of violence. How do women cope with violence? How did they build resilience? And coming back to the type of jobs they do, the questions, they're also asked to explain a bit about the nature of the jobs which I'll be pointing out in a moment. And about the aspirations of the future - most of these women are single women. You know they have had a lot of violence in their lives so they must have some kind of hope for the future - what is that? 

Two factors that came out largely while investigating this group of women; normally there is an assumption that most women who join the informal entertainment industry - the sex industry - they joined because of poverty or because of factors like human trafficking, but the evidence that emerged from this study showed otherwise. Internal conflict and this is applicable anywhere else in the world. And Nepal kind of saw a big, it’s not a civil law but kind of a civil law - the maoist insurgent struggle between 1996 and 2006. So among the significant findings that emerge from the interviews conducted with women who work in this sector, is that the 10 year long Maoist conflict between 1996 to 2006 led by the maoist forces, known as the people's liberation army, against government forces had devastating consequences on the early lives. You know one third of the women that are interviewed were directly affected by the conflict. Six women confirmed that they were abducted, sexually abused, raped, and were used as child soldiers during the conflict. Others who had migrated when they were very young said that the conflict was the main cause for them to move to a city, because school children were regularly abducted by the people’s liberation army and were forced to join ranks in their forces. And recruited girls were used as scouts, spies, porters, cooks and also inducted in the cultural troops. The cultural troops means people who propagate the maoist ideology through music and culture. 

The other factors that are responsible for driving women to these sectors are pretty well known - child marriage. Now, all the participants interviewed married below the age of 18. None of them are educated, notions of honour, caste system,  abusive husbands because the husbands are also pretty young when they migrate to the city - you know they either go abroad or get into relationship with someone else and they abandon their wives. And most of them are single mothers, they have children. Alcohol being another problem because they become very very abusive. 

In this slide I just want to give an impression of what it was meant for a few women you know, what happened to them when they joined the PLA. 

You can see this is a quote from one of the participants. She was abducted because her brother was in the army and she was meant to kill a lot of people. She said once during the clash with the army she had to lie down on the ground a bullet hit her. She was bleeding and all she got was a pain killer. And as a part of training she was made to lie on the ground they would then chop off a branch from the tree which would fall on her stomach and they were told that this would uh help build strength and they can and they can be a good fighter.

Another participant said that she was taken to the jungle, she was tortured, stoned, beaten badly and made to do a lot of work. She was also a mother so when the baby cried they would put mud in her stomach and they would keep the baby in the cave. And she fainted several times and they used to give her food every two-three days and she was sexually abused, she was hanged to a tree and raped, and then she managed to flee. The unfortunate thing is that when the peace process was signed between the government and the various forces these women were forgotten and they were not even accepted by their families. Even today in the peace process or the reconciliation process or whatever mechanisms have been set up by Nepal, these women have not been compensated and they have not received any justice.

But you can see the level of trauma these women have faced and the only options for them was to go and join the sex industry because that is the only place they could have earned some kind of money. 

Case Studies [13:40]

For the other women - why do they actually join the industry?

Here are examples - case studies of three women. 

One participant who is now age 41, she says that her husband was very violent and later abandoned her and other jobs, which is very important, we talk a lot about other jobs in informal sectors but those jobs the participant has repeatedly mentioned that those jobs are equally exploitative. So she here says that other jobs are not profitable, and she used to cycle 20 kilometers to sell vegetables but her business never picked up. Children was starving and they could not go to school and she says that ‘I was struggling to make ends meet’ and a friend told her about this sex work and purely out of desperation she joined the industry and worked as a contract sex worker because she could not have let her children starve. And after a year she was able to save enough money and set up our own business and now she earns around 15,000 rupees.

Participant 2 shares that she worked as a domestic maid working from 5 a.m to 12 p.m but she has never paid money. But when they came to know that she's from her past she was simply fired. But then she was young and had an impressionable mind, and she came across someone who told her about this industry where it could seem she could make a lot of money. And then she joined a massage spa center. And she says that the first few days she was asked to do cleaning work, and one day they asked her to massage a customer, and then they told her that if she wanted to earn more money she has to go beyond that, which means getting involved with sex work. 

And another participant makes it very clear that she needed money to run the house and educate her daughter. She was not educated and to live a decent life in a city like Kathmandu you need 15 to 20,000 rupees. And on top of that she says that there is domestic violence so women must fend for themselves and must take up jobs for survival. She personally worked as domestic maiden in the construction sites that those jobs were not proper and they did not pay much, and after her childbirth she could not go back and work as a labourer. So she joined a massage parlour and only after joining this sector she realized that she was expected to do something else.

But once they joined the sector there is some kind of benefit, not in benefit, there's some kind of empowerment that these women experience. For example you can see here that one woman says that you know ink everything and today if she's alive and if her children are going to school it is because she's earning an income. And she says that she has suffered when there was no income and she had no voice earlier and now she's independent and she's a confident person. And she says that if you have no income even your children don't become yours. And today if a child deserves to have a fruit she's in a position to buy that from him.

Another participant says that because of the income that she earns through this sector she feels very confident and she feels that she she can win in life under any capacity. Her daughter does not know about her work but one day she said she would not hesitate if she asked. Because she is very proud to be standing on her own feet. 

And another participants said that you know income has made her very confident, and had she not worked her family would have married her off. And this particular woman, she  is a sex worker she also does a bit of advocacy work you know teaching women who are engaged in this sector about condoms, contaminants, and she says that she is thankful to her parents for letting her do what she wanted.

In this particular slide I just want to give an example that although these women might be employed in this very exploitative sector, the other jobs which are available in the market for women who are not skilled and not not educated are equally exploitative. For example one sex worker who you know for age now sells vegetables says that while selling vegetables she faces a lot of harassment from the police, they kind of extort money from her,  which is also true for women who work in the sex and entertainment.

Sometimes they become violent and throw away the vegetables as you're not allowed to sell them on the road, and she was also taken into custody you know and she goes on to say that there's not much difference but violence is of different kind,  not much difference between the violence in the sex and entertainment industry and the violence for normal women. She says that the authorities abused us and, you know, was working in the sex industry they would often tell her that why don't you do other jobs. And while selling vegetables you know the municipality and the police also kind of harasses them and it is not safe for a vegetable vendor if you're a woman because when it rains you know in the men kind of look at them because they get wet and they cannot stay long after dark, and sometimes the vegetables rot because of rain and the losses suffer. And so the marketplaces are not really safe for women either. I mean, there's no provision to mark to make the marketplaces safer there's no designated place where women can you know sell their stuff. And when asked if the levels of violence has increased for her or any other women at her place, she says that a lot depends on the women but in the entertainment industry it is still the same it never changes. Violence will always be there it is about improving the safety of work place which hasn't happened which, is a very important statement really coming from someone who has faced a lot of violence.

Now when you talk about income you know often we talk about agency and empowerment but there are four - the agency and empowerment is also linked with four dimensions of power. Which is power over like when you have control over personal decisions, and power to autonomy over household decisions, there is also power with power that you acquire when you women come you know when they collectively when they come together and power from like enhancing individuals dignity and awareness. 

What I found from this study is that of course when women join the sector, it's a conscious decision - it's a strategic decision because it's a question of survival. So one thing when they were married you know one one thing that in their life, they had no voice they had no agency because they have always been in a very exploitative situation right from the time uh they were growing up in adolescence, even as a child. 

But you can see here the moment they start earning income and I'd like to repeat that they're all single mothers and they all want a great food for the children. Because of the money they have earned they have some kind of autonomy over their personal decisions for the first time in their life they are able to take decisions for themselves and how to spend the money and how they are going to run the house so immediately though they might be working in a very vulnerable sector, they experience two kind of powers here - power over and power to. 

But I have been mentioning a lot about violence and the nature of work they have to do and here is an account of a couple of women.

They said that you know the way these women have to work if you're working in a bar, they are paid commission based on a number of drinks the current customer purchases so it's their job to ensure that the customer is constantly buying alcohol and that is how they make money. And so for example one participant said let me tell you our profit there is all sorts of physical harassment. The other problem is that we can't work without fear of police. Also as a woman I face a lot of harassment while travelling in a bus. There is some sort of daily harassment like someone trying to pinch me or touch me - I do resist but what else can you do police helps women who are empowered and powerful, they only harass women who are working in this sector. There's also an uncertainty about payment and we are forced to drink alcohol and if you do not drink we are treated badly. Men humiliate them and they call them by bad names and main kind of men who are in power,  in the army,  men in politic or the police,  they feel that they can do whatever they want. 

Another participant said that ‘I faced a lot of violence: physical, sexual and verbal. A big percentage of customers looked for sex. It is a part of the package since prostitution is illegal, illegal in Nepal, it is provided in massage parlors and many men who are from police come in plain clothes and take my services but the later they refuse to pay saying that they are policemen and many women also operate from open spaces and police or police harassment is the major problem if we do not listen to them they even take us into custody.’ 

Just to point out here, the massage parlor is also is one of the fastest rapidly-rapidly sector even in India in big cities now, it has come up everywhere and it employs hundreds and thousands of women from various parts of the subcontinent. 

But coming back how do these women actually build resilience to this this level of violence and once you're in this sector obviously you might be earning money but given the high level of violence, how do you actually cope? And how do you actually create the coping mechanisms?

While doing this study you know I  came across four local NGOs which are actually set up by women who initially worked in this sector but now they have gone they have gone on to help other women who are working in this sectors. Women's collectives play a significant role. I'm going to give an example of one NGO which is called Raksha Nepal and it's run by a lady called Manuka Tapa who earlier used to work in this sector. And she set up this credit and saving schemes because most of these women do not have citizenship. They never had papers in their life because the husband abandoned them and the families abandoned them and so they do not have access to financial mechanisms. So they have credit and saving schemes. Union you know the formal membership which is registered in the youth labour ministry. It brings a lot of women together and that gives them a collective voice. 

This is a quote from the chairperson of Raksha Nepal, the NGO, that I just mentioned and she said that in 2004 she realised that women are not saving enough so I came up with the idea uh to pull you know savings because if you could pull your money you could have some kind of savings. She said that I cannot help everyone but everyone can help someone. The women frequently worried about the children's future I told them that if they save 50 rupees a day they can gradually save enough to do something in a few years and that can be used to pay for children's education. 

We took 10 rupees from every woman to start it and in four years it became a significant amount. And that's served as a collateral to open credit and saving scheme, and now these schemes have been over eight to ten thousand women and when I  spoke to them it's actually working without able to save and some of the women you know - they have been able to come out of this profession once because of old age and they've been able to set up micro businesses.

Again coming back to resilience I have used a framework while doing this study uh it's called ferguson zimmerman's 2005. it essentially says that you know uh resilience model you know it kind of stresses on the importance of ecological context - that external factors like peer networks may help women to respond more effectively to social health and occupational risks so the support system the the four NGOs that I came across that I met while doing this study you know they were actually providing mentoring relationships you know you know there was some kind of trust between the women bringing all these women together so they were giving providing a kind of a protective mechanism you and promoting resilience in the face of neglect, abuse, low socioeconomic status, and other challenges. 

And how it is manifested, I’ll just give an example, here is an account of two women. They joined they came in contact with angio raksha

In Nepal and one of the participants she says that she took vocational trainings and learned stitching and tailoring for nine months and she was able to access loans and she was able to set up her own business, and now she she's confident enough and she feels that she's very confident and she can provide for her daughter's education. Another participant says that she was able to learn the local language and she participated in leadership program which made her feel empowered. The credit and saving schemes was really helpful for her because she was able to buy a piece of land and she was able to put her daughter in the shelter home run by these NGOs. And she has learned not to be silent and demand her rights which is very significant and ‘I help other women who are in trouble and teach them about how to protect themselves’ from health risk and also you know she tells them about using condoms.

So talking about resilience what we found was - because these women have had a lot of trauma in their life they have certain strength within them, they have already have some kind of coping mechanisms, also a bit of self-confidence and determination - but that needs to be manifested or accentuated. So the peer networks and they provide counselling, skill development training, and they also create a community and when women come and gather here that confidence kind of increases and there is definitely an outcome of this. 

So this is basically a model which I proposed, for example this is the entry level perception - women may have low self esteem here, because they have had a lot of violence in their lives, and they come in a power within is when they come in contact with women's collectives. So these NGOs, the peer networks, they provide four kinds of services - psychosocial counselling, education, self-esteem awareness about their rights, and skill development so that they have a choice here. 

Together they also have access to the union and credit and saving schemes, and because they spend a lot of time together and they have a collective response to violence their external passives and changes they have they're more confident over time, and this kind of leads to resilience and kind of experience our weight because they're aware of their rights and dignity and sometimes they kind of experience empowerment this is what I observed while doing this study. 

How do you actually measure empowerment? It  is very difficult to say. But then in the women they make a conscious decision here to join the entertainment industry. They benefit from an income because the income kind of gives them an autonomy and voice, because they have control over the money and they are in a position to take independent decisions. So definitely there's a use of choice here, and then there's also an existence of choice and peer networks exist. If they wish, if they desire they can come in contact with them. While the violence remains constant, peer networks provide different kinds of supports and they also have inner strength - because these women are brilliant fighters. And this kind of leads to an achievement of choice in most of the cases they want to have a good future for their children and hope for a better life

So one of the immediate benefits that emerge from earning and income is that women feel largely confident while the education and well-being of the children remain the main priority, the sense of empowerment can be seen as what kabute describes as a state of consciousness but the women have not been able to take control of their lives but their will to overturn the dominant masculine and patriarchal norms that has kept them or other women in a situation of subordination for a very, very long time.

So that kind of changes when they start working in a very cosmopolitan environment like in the capital of Nepal. 

Resilience in other sectors [31:05] 

So these resilience models - can it be applied in other sectors?

So in India recently I was travelling and I was researching, doing a story of women farmers. And I had travelled to one of the largest states in India with a population of 200 million here - Uttar pradesh - and in India you know 79% of women in rural workforce, especially women are engaged in agriculture activities. And according to the latest economic service of India women constitute more than 55 percent of the farming sectors main workers, which is defined as anyone who spends six months or more in a year making money through agricultural activities yet they only hold 12.8 percent of the agriculture assets. 

Here is an account of all of the farmers here that you have just seen and she says that our day begins at the deep and dawn after completing all household work and sending children to school we have to go to field and cultivate our land in the in the afternoon we return home to attend our livestock soon after we go back to the field where we work until sunset.

This is the kind of work they have to do in the fields when the husbands away working in cities. The farms where the women work in uttar pradesh or most of India are very small but they're essential to the survival of their families who rely on the income earned by selling vegetables so they have number of mouths to feed and and they also have to pay for the children's education and for unforeseen expenses but in India the problem is that the labour you know these women are not recognized and workers and because of which they don't have access to a lot of schemes the government benefits and schemes because they are simply not recognized as workers.

So in one of the villages I came across a Union run by this women here, Sir Swati Devi, fire brand woman and she has been in protest movements and she has been able to mobilise women and she says that you know that ‘if the government does not come to us we shall come to the government’. So you can see again in the collective when women start speaking in collectively the administration of the government is sometimes forced to listen. 

And post pandemic you know there's a lot of focus on agriculture you know going back to the basics you know all other sectors may have failed, but especially in India in the agriculture sector has actually done well. And a recent study has found that if farmers, especially farmers if they belong to cooperative self-help groups and other organisations that can help them connect to the market and they should they earn the life is a bit better in that way.

Recommendations [34:05]

Here, in terms of recommendations, how do you get women out and get them working in industries, in factories, in jobs which are traditionally not known to be employing women?

Some of the big challenges are you could have any number of policies in in this subcontinent, India, Nepal, but social norms are very difficult to change and that's not going to change, behaviour change is not going to come through. Like if you set up a factory somewhere it’s very difficult for women to actually travel to that place and some of the factories like for example steel or any other factory, it's kind of perceived that women are not supposed to be doing those kind of jobs. 

Security,  toilets, men’s backlash are all big big problems.

But recently I came across a good example - it is a success story of NGOs, corporations and the government coming together to smash gender biases and help them join with becoming a part of the workforce. There’s a project called the Disha project which is run by

Indian development foundation and UNDP, and supported by the Ikea foundation. And they work with companies to address potential issues like structural changes, both their policy and infrastructure levels. Pur stringent security systems in place, so that women are not harassed, and health and safety measures and appointing women welfare officers. These are some of the practical things that needs to be done you know separate toilets crazy specialty dining and recreational areas which are all very expensive and not many factories or companies are going to do unless they're incentivized by the government and but the factory that I visited it was observed that over time men behaved most overly in the presence of women colleagues and this is how it all changed you know like in one of the very remote areas where I had been you know women have been taught how to drive scooters you know second they can go to work to the factories. It’s happening actually so one of the big challenges about not being able to move mobilisation and going to a place. Mobility factor - which was not there now because they have a scooter - and when they're being trained they're suddenly empowered and they go into the factories and you can see it is a live example and there's a girl a graduate here who is now working as a supervisor but when she wanted to join this factory there was a bit of a backlash her parents did not want her to join.

But there are still problems women cannot do night shifts and because if they're employed in big numbers in him in societies and the social norms of the patriarch is very strong there's often a backlash of various kinds uh and because of which the companies are frightened to be honest they're really frightened to employ uh women because of political backlash too so in terms of general recommendations you know in how you help women to build resilience you know, to protect their jobs.

Capacity building of women leaders you know which I have not really mentioned here - I've used a framework called positive deviance. 

Positive defence of normally women or men who kind of behave differently from their peers and against and they fight the odds. For example all the women I've interviewed the women who have set up NGOs - they were all a part of the industry but now they work as social workers helping other women. 

Recognizing women as walks, for example last week I spoke to someone called ninja bhatnagar who has worked a lot with women farmers in India the labour of women is not recognized women farmers in particular, so it's important that they are recognized and given the status of worker. Some good news is that you know following the pandemic the national human rights commission has issued an advisor recognizing sex workers informal workers that's in India to make them eligible for beneficiary schemes most women you know in Nepal in particular that do not have citizenship they are kind of stateless uh people because of their circumstances, and it has been an uphill task to get their citizenship recognised. 

The rights of domestic workers employed by people who are actually well-off more educated middle lots of people, but the pandemic has shown otherwise and many of millions of them have actually lost their jobs - the families have not been paying their salaries. Supporting women collectives still remains the key from the example that I have just cited. Women when they speak collectively they're in a far more better position to bargain and and claim their rights, political will, which is always lacking. 

Tackling customary laws, making action laws are never ever going to help because women in tribal societies and Indian communities - their lives are not governed by national policies, constitution, any other cause - it's always the customary laws. For example there are far more single women in India than separated women because men can simply dump them whenever they like, and it's only the village councils - the panchayats which are called in India - they take decisions and they're always in men. 

Finally, making men the part of change. One reason why the campaigns on gender rights for example it is not up to the markets because men are not part of the campaigns of change - for example when you talk about human trafficking you have to make men part of the solution as well - it cannot be led only by women it's not really a solution . 

So these are some of the general recommendations which I have for you based on this talk.

You might you know if you want to read a bit more about what I have just mentioned, last year a paper was published along with my ph.d supervisor dr thames in bradley Tales of Suffering: Women's Experiences of working in Nepal's Informal Service is available online and as I mentioned in the beginning of the talk the book is coming up next year. So with that I would like to conclude this talk; thank you very much for this for giving me the opportunity. Thank you.

Questions [40:12]

Leila: Thank you so much,  that was really very very interesting, fascinating and also obviously extremely important. What is really important in your presentation is to show in particular that all the stories of this woman - they relate and they can be exportable so to speak they're not only purely Nepalese or Indian the patterns of violence but also the patterns of resilience that you have identified we have identified elsewhere. I'm thinking about you know extremely dramatic situation of genocide of civil wars in rwanda in former yugoslavia and today in a number of conflicts areas so this is one of the reason your work is extremely important, because your conclusion can be applied to a number of other territories. Really I like very much your conclusion when you say that you have to engage with men because the change is not going to come without men so that's also something extremely important.

We've received a number of questions from the audience and I'm sure we're going to receive a few more so I'm going to hold my own question for later. The first question from terence: As a YSO worker I know we are active in Nepal can we help with your mission?

S: Sorry Leila can you repeat the question please it's not very clear 

L: No, no issue. As a YSO worker I know we are active in India in Nepal so can they help with your mission? Terence if you're here maybe you want to take the floor to elaborate upon your question because I guess that you want to ask a question about. 

Terrance: Hello.

L: Thanks Terrance, would you like to elaborate further on your question?

T: Yes - I work with YSO in various different countries and I know that we're very active in Nepal we have a very active office there which has been looking very very seriously at women's issues and I wondered whether there was any uh chance of linking up with the research that's being done and using that to help both of us. 

S: Well I'll be really really happy if that can be done actually you know a lot of opportunities and you know as I was telling during the course of my talk you know I have walked to four different organisations in Nepal they're part of this term and they would benefit from such collaborations you know and expertise that you might bring in you know okay because uh this group of women that I have just mentioned is what's one of the the sex and entertainment industry in Nepal is one of the largest some of the fast growing because of number of reasons and poverty or lack of employment and what we are expected to see after pandemic it's kind of it's a bit scary to me to say the least you know because I've gone back to this group and many of them to be literally starving and because they are not recognized citizens uh they have not been able to access or benefit from the any kind of relief or the work the government has announced following the pandemic so yeah yeah I'd be very happy to kind of connect with you and and maybe take it forward. If that answers the question? 

T: Thank you very much 

L: Fantastic so terrence you will make sure to connect you to suiting so you can write to me or to see directly but feel free to write to me I'm easy to find and I'll connect you to suti. And indeed Suti you're working with a large number of international organisations including the UN as you mentioned because this work is very collaborative collaborative in any case. Thank you so much, we'll have another question from lauren: what are the shortcomings of the laws related to prostitution in India?

S: Leila, I’m afraid you'll have to repeat that again your voice is not very clear.

L: All right - what are the shortcomings of the laws related to prostitution in India?

S: Well in India prostitution is kind of not legal I know and but there is no it's not really well defined it's it's it's everywhere but like Nepal like what happened uh just like just like Nepal you know the women who walk directly in brothels and they face a lot of harassment from police and though there is an underground condo there is a kind of apparently there is a is emergence of an entertainment industry in the form of spa massage parlours which employs a lot of women and there's a lot of exploitation, at the moment there's no kind of a law to regulate them you know or to kind of adjust the exploitation because it's not recognized or people are quite after people do not talk about it in general but as for prostitution is concerned in India it's not legal. And they are fighting for the right in the sense that just last week you know the national human rights commission has passed an advisory to recognise them as women at work but then the there's another lobby that kind of fights for human trafficking and they are not very happy with this advisory.

L: Indeed Suti, and that that's a global debate really because it's a discussion which happens in the number of countries we have a question from palabi which relates actually. What you think about the decision taken by national human rights commission in India about identifying sex work as informal work?

S: I think it's a very good decision because you know we have had a lot of laws and quite stringent laws around human trafficking you know because the biggest opposition or resistance comes from the lobby that works in the human trafficking area but I have been reporting on human trafficking for over a decade now and there's a very little correlation between the sex industry and human traffiking and most women in India are not really directly employed in what we see in a red light area or bottle or something like that the sex industry in the entertainment centre, it's really growing mushrooming in bigger cities and there is no laws or in a provisions to protect these women who are actually exploited if they are not victims of human trafficking. In India trafficking happens for a number of other reasons mainly for marriages or because of domestic work you know a lot of agencies that have come up in bigger cities and they traffic women uh uh slaves and they kind of work in as maids in homes of middle class people. But there's also trafficking for marriages because of this skewed sex in some northern Indian states but there is no direct correlation obviously some women are trafficked and you know pushed into this industry. But then the sex industry in India is very very old you know and despite all the regulations and laws you know it it's not become small it's growing. In bigger cities like mumbai thousands and thousands of women are employed it's a question of their livelihood idea would be to make the job safer you know and I think I can wholeheartedly support the advisory that's passed by the national human rights commission.

L: Thank you very much. I have a question for you which relates to some extent to the legal environment and environment not only which the women are working but also on the basis of which they might be judged or not. The panchayat system - could you elaborate further on that, because obviously you know there's a very large literature which has been published on pancha system whether it's good or not. I myself am extremely puzzled about the panchayat, but this is not necessarily a notion that everybody knows about so could you kindly explain about what you were talking. 

S: The panchayat is the it's the local village living council in the first kind of in Indian democratic system and the panchayats the local councils and the village level they have a lot of so it's the first kind of uh state towards democracy. And the Indian law so I think states that I think around 33 of these seats has to go to women which is a very positive step in the direction uh but you know I have been to a number of villages just last week I was running a hand washing campaign in in maharashtra in western Indian states and I visited a couple of villages and I could see women on you know uh women leaders or women quite actively coming and participating but in many places though women have had powers in the sense that they are they are counsellors but it's the husbands who call the shots. They do not necessarily speak, it's purely for politicians - they tend to you know put their wives in that position because the husbands are powerful but the panchayat is the first level of governance in India and they have considerable power and all the government benefits and schemes, especially related to water, sanitation, menstrual hygiene and you know it has to be they get a lot of that a lot of budget is allocated to them and it doesn't need their powers to actually if they really want they can implement those projects on the ground. So as the structure it's it's a very it's a good system of governance a good system of strengthening the uh democracy, but there are problems like corruption and political issues and you know and sometimes not right people being in that position which is often the case. 

L: Yes and I suppose that there are problems as well in terms of the customary law on which the decisions are based, because often this customary law is not particularly pro-woman and rather quite oppressive. So I suppose that it’s about finding a fine balance between the national legislation and more customary law.

S: Yeah there is not - from my experience what I have seen - there is no provisional there is no mechanism to educate the local leaders about the laws or the policies or how they can actually improve the lives of people and what it means to have those policies and laws in place. The local council leaders, or the panchayat leaders, they love their own laws, the customary laws. They like to be regulated because they have a say - it's a patriarchal order you know which they're never going to get away. For example two years back in India there was a big there's a lot of talk about chipotle - it's about how a muslim man can divorce his women by uttering the words ‘dulap’ three times you know and the government wanted to have pop around that to protect muslim women, but when I was doing this story I realised that in India the number of separated women are far more than divorces women because for example in bigger states like Rajasthan and Gujarat and some tribal fronts, a man can simply abandon his wife and the panchayat council always takes the side of men. Which is all right for the others, so again it's a manifestation of patriarchy more than anything else. And the judiciary or the constitutional provisions which are available do not really interfere or this type of things are never reported - women are in the receiving end and most of these women are again, single mothers and they're often left to fend for themselves.

This is one of the reasons why this sector you know the sex and industry sector is always going to grow unless you protect it and values it provides the question of the survival because you have to realise that these women are not educated they do not have skills where they go? So this is one option that's easily available. In the context of Nepal of course the situation is similar but then because the the economic prospect in that country is not really good so, because of tourism and other factors, the entertainment sector is always going to mushroom you know it's going to prosper. 

L: Indeed, and there is maybe a very last question because I'm conscious of time but it's really interesting. You addressed briefly the idea of citizenship - and you said that in Nepal in particular, I'm sure in certain parts of India but it's clearer in Nepal, some of these women are non-existent - they have no existence, no legal existence as a citizen - how is that? 

S: Well the pal government is trying to address this issue. A lot of groups for example the NGOs that I've made they've been uh campaigning actively for women to get the citizenship. This is because uh most of the women are married when they're very young and they're not educated and they're kind of abandoned by the husbands which means they do not have any papers with them and in many cases for example because of its ten years conflict you know uh many women they could never return home. And they have do not have identity the Nepalese government has been very reluctant to recognise this women citizenship laws in Nepal is pretty stringent it's very difficult to prove. But I think over the last few years there has been a lot of activism in a positive direction and even in India for example I think if you want a passport and if a single mother you really do not need the name of the male or a father but these things are progressive. Nepal's constitution I think that the new constitution itself is very very progressive when it comes to achieving gender equality in many fronts but the problem is that it needs to be implemented on the ground - far more people need to be educated and there needs to be a more stronger movement or activism in that regard. 

And that might be essential to strengthen the women's collectives. One of the problems with the women's collective, the NGOs which are run by women - these are very strong women they're brilliant at articulation but they themselves are not educated. They can do certain things but beyond that, they cannot. And then they are influenced by political parties and these women go on to political parties and the entire kind of project fails their own and this is the trend. So it's important to build the capacities of the local organisations more than anything else - they need to know know about their rights and the type of things that you are mentioning and that does not happen. 

L: Indeed I think that's going to be the conclusion - the education of rights are two rights and the need for where all the international and national actors to act together towards that because we're not necessarily lacking legislation. In a number of these countries the constitution is already a good tool and we do have appropriate legislation but as you said its implementation is always extremely difficult. Suti thank you so much because once again that was fascinating and equally important your work is based on years of research, blending journalism with academic work. It's in this regard extremely unique and important. You mentioned one of your publications and one more time I'd like to mention that you have your book which is coming up with Routledge in a few months so we'll make sure we refer to that for everyone on the website as well. Thank you so much Suti and I'd like to thank as well my team - in particular today Jason, Olga, Claudia and Gloria. I'll see you next week for another webinar. Thank you very much for being such a great audience as well.

S: Thank you very much and thank you everyone for coming to this presentation. 

L: Thank you, Suti. Alright, bye-bye everyone.