amritaspeaks

Those who have been following my blog will know that I believe in challenging perceptions with every post I upload. This International Women’s Day I am very happy to narrate another story that shatters all ingrained perceptions about women.

When you ask a carpenter to come over to your house to make a wardrobe or fix a broken bed or a table, you would not expect a woman to walk in. But the time has come when you should not be surprised if a woman does this work for you. There are no gender stereotypes anymore. Literally!

Recently, some women were invited to an art gallery, where various objects were displayed inside a wardrobe. They were asked a simple question: Which of the things they saw were made by women? As each of the women inspected the objects, all guesses gravitated towards the objects, like clothes, jewellery, art etc. Not one participant thought that the wardrobe itself could have been made by women.

They were then introduced to India’s first all-women carpentry team trained by the NGO Archana Women’s Centre. Greenply, in association with this Kerala-based organization, that works towards empowering women has done, what till now, was unthinkable in India.

(This video is directed by a woman too, Anandi Ghose.)

Breaking stereotypes

When it comes to training women to earn a living most NGOs focus on teaching them sewing, embroidery, organic farming or making dairy products. No one thought women could work with wood and make a wardrobe from scratch. Archana Women’s Centre has been empowering women with skills that include unconventional trades like building technology, carpentry, ferro-cement technology (making of thin but strong structures for buildings), bamboo technology and production of concrete bricks.

The fact that Greenply has come forward to collaborate with women carpenters, trained in the centre, is a big step forward.

The website of Archana Women’s centre says: Archana Women Centre moved into its own office magnificently constructed by a women masons group in the year 2006. It was erected to challenge the conventional male centered concept of development by empowering the marginalized and under privileged women in the society and arm them with the weapon of self reliance and dignity. AWC is determined not to follow the traditional jobs which keep women low paid, low in status and low in self image. Instead, AWC tries to initiate more and more women especially from the construction sector, who are destined to stay as helper for all their life, to the dignified and highly paid jobs of masonry, carpentry, ferro- cement technology, bamboo technology etc.  Our goal is to dismantle the barriers of gender discrimination prevailing in the technical employment sector, by means of training, empowerment and continued motivational support to women.

Our goal is to dismantle the barriers of gender discrimination prevailing in the technical employment sector

On the other hand women play a definitive role in Greenply’s business enterprises. Their plant in Tizit, Nagaland, employs over 130 women – nearly a third of the workforce. It also works with a network of over 550 female architects across the country. At every stage, they strive to find ways to empower and include women in their ecosystem, where they can drive the industry forward with their enterprise.

With this initiative, Greenply turns those efforts towards the one discipline which, despite being so closely tied to their industry, has so long been a man’s domain – carpentry. And they make just one appeal to all – stop saying women can’t.

Today happens to be my blog’s Seventh Anniversary. It has been an eye-opening and fulfilling journey so far.

HAPPY WOMEN’S DAY!