Tribal women leaders interface with civil society
|
Indigenous and tribal people represent about five per cent of the world’s population, but over 15% of the world’s poor.
Amongst them, the plight of tribal women is more precarious than their male counterparts as they often encounter additional barriers related to gender. To deliberate on the some of the important issues concerning tribal women, Centre for Youth and Social Development (CYSD) organised a “State Level Tribal Women Leader’s Summit” from March 21 – 23, 2008, at IMAGE, OUAT, Bhubaneswar, India. Held in collaboration with NAWO and We Can Orissa, the four-day summit was a part of CYSD’s silver jubilee celebrations.
The objective was to help explore enabling and disabling factors for transformation of tribal women’s leadership, deepen their understanding on issues affecting tribal society and promote self-esteem, self-confidence and self-help among them. 53 tribal women leaders from six districts of Orissa i.e. Koraput, Sundargarh, Mayurbhanja, Keonjhar, Cuttack, Khurda participated in this programme. Representatives from government and civil society and eminent social activists were also present at the summit. Tara Dutt, Commissioner and Secretary, ST & SC, Minorities and OBC Development, formally inaugurated the program. Addressing the gathering, Dutt said that it is high time that people start asserting their rights. ‘Triple burden’ on tribal women The participants felt that the social status of tribal women is all about subordination or subjugation and is primarily characterised by what is called a ‘triple burden’ of productivity, reproductivity and domestic labour. Women have a more time-consuming and arduous workload in comparison to their male counterparts as they are chiefly responsible for water collection, health care, sanitation and education of their children. In addition to this, they suffer from poor nutritional status associated with their position in the household, gendered division of labour, food hierarchies, lack of decision making power etc. One of the pertinent areas in relation to women empowerment process is the decision-making power of women, be it within the household or community.
Women’s role is indispensable in emerging community based organisations like Self Help Group, Grain Bank, and Mother Teacher Association etc. But they often lack status, mobility, language skills and literacy – and these factors combine to undermine their confidence and exclude them from processes of decision-making. Lack of decision-making The social processes and institutions that result in sever economic and social inequalities prevent tribal women from reaching their full potential as food producers, wage earners or in other words the guardian of household food and nutritional security. Their emerging leadership to fight for issues like water, alcohol abuse, education, health and domestic violence in their new role as elected representatives has posed a lot of challenges vis-à-vis their role in changing governance practice and processes. Their increasing participation in the decentralised planning process, in the process of community monitoring of various programmes, higher status of decision-making and management roles are some of the key areas which need to be emphasised and explored for the realisation of their dream and, translating them into action to ensure a sustainable and equitable society. Eminent tribal women leaders who were present on the occasion expressed their discontent on the fact that tribal leaders had never been consulted during the formulation of polices for them. During the first two days of the summit, participants held discussions on issues affecting tribal women like life and livelihood, education, health, PDS, water, land, housing and agriculture and social security.
The third day saw the exchange of possible remedies and solutions to the problems and the last day was devoted towards an interface between the participants and the representatives from the civil society including govt representatives and NGO’s. Challenges faced Bijuli Patra from Keonjhar highlighted that massive deforestation has caused soil erosion, scarcity of firewood, evaporation of medicinal plants, non-availability of forest products, pastureland etc. Andhari Majhi from Rayagada, raised the issue of land acquisition by the mafia and the multi-national companies. Champa Soi from Mayurbhanj expressed concern over state of education infrastructure. Lack of quality education, low attendance of teachers and poor quality of food under the mid-day meal scheme has resulted in high dropout ratio. Absence of doctors in the hospital, poor state of public distribution system, ineffective implementation of government’s rural job scheme also received attention. The four-day summit proved to be an insightful forum for the representatives of nine tribal districts of Orissa wherein they not only came up with their problems but also got a chance to interact with the civil society representatives and search for possible ways out of their problems. Participants observed that the presence of NGOs has played a major role in the process of women empowerment. |
Printable version
Back to top
