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Making Infrastructure Work for Women
Through an innovative project, rural women are finding their way into Bangladesh’s mainstream economyBackgroundAmbia Begum lives in the rural village of Uttar Bottrish Hazari in the Kaligonj sub-district of Lalmonirhat district in Bangladesh. Several years ago, she purchased a piece of farmland with borrowings from the Grameen Bank. Life was looking good—until she became seriously ill and her husband divorced her because of her poor health. She was forced to sell her land to pay for an operation and other medical treatment. Left with nothing but her three children and the responsibility of raising them—alone—Ambia Begum became desperate. Today, however, her life has turned around again. She can be found running her own tea shop at the Chaparhat Women’s Market Section. Through the ADB-assisted Third Rural Infrastructure Development Project, many poor rural women like Ambia Begum have been allotted market space and given the necessary training to enable them to enter the mainstream rural economy—and change their situations. Reaching the Poorest of the Poor
The Project, which started in 1998, promotes economic growth through infrastructure development, and in the process is creating access to economic activities in 13 rural districts. Besides roads and bridges, the Project is helping develop rural markets, which have special corners for poor women to sell their products and bring them into mainstream economic activities. Although the Project benefits all people in these rural communities, its impact is particularly changing the lives of rural women, including some of the very poorest of the poor. It has created income-generating opportunities for men and women to maintain the infrastructure developed, and specifically employed poor and disadvantaged women to take care of roadside tree plantations and maintain more than 1,300 kilometers of roads. Poverty remains pervasive in Bangladesh, where half the population is below the poverty line. With a per capita income of $370 a year, Bangladesh is one of the world’s poorest countries. Female-headed households have perhaps the worst lot, with a shocking 95% of them living below the poverty line. With poverty very much a rural phenomenon, investment in rural infrastructure is crucial to facilitate economic growth and reduce poverty in Bangladesh. At the same time, new nonfarm employment opportunities are urgently needed to cope with surging living costs.
New Concept for the Rural AreasOne of the innovative ideas implemented through the Project is putting in place “women’s sections” in rural markets. Like Ambia Begum, Murshida Begum is another woman who has benefited from this concept. She has a small shop in the wom-en’s section of the Pan Bazaar in northwestern Bangladesh, where she sells utensils and glassware. When the market was improved and expanded in 1999, one part of it was set aside for shops to be run by women. Before that, women had little or no opportunity to sell anything at the market because social norms in rural Bangladesh make it difficult for women to set up stalls next to male shopkeepers. Now the management committee has allotted 10 shops to women entrepreneurs. “This is a new concept in Bangladesh,” says Mohammad Abdul Rashid, Chairman of the Market Management Committee. And it seems to be working to the benefit of numerous women. But getting the market sections off the ground required a far more holistic approach than had been originally envisaged. Motivational Campaigns Needed
In Bangladesh, where it is widely perceived that a “decent” woman should not go to the market, simply providing special market infrastructure to women without other assistance—such as confidence building and basic business training for them—seemed unlikely to succeed. Urgently needed was a more comprehensive approach to women’s empowerment that emphasizes women’s roles as users, managers, and beneficiaries of the infrastructure. So in the middle of the Project, designs were modified and a comprehensive Gender Action Plan was prepared. The women’s market space component is expected to create business opportunities for 4,370 women traders. Already, 510 shops have been constructed in 64 market sections, and 500 women have received leases for the shops. Women have been involved in the planning and site selection, with all women’s market spaces having separate water and toilet facilities. Selection criteria prioritized poor women and ensured that husbands did not use wives’ names to get additional space.
Women have also been encouraged to become members of trader associations and trained with the help of NGOs on trade licensing, business procedures, taxes and tolls, and facility operation and maintenance. Motivational campaigns are an important element of the Project. Campaigns are used to encourage women and girls to go to the market to shop—otherwise the women vendors, who target females, won’t have many customers. Other motivational campaigns are aimed at men, some of whom feel jealous that women have such nice shops without having to invest a lot of money. Despite women coming forward to make use of this opportunity, the path to their effective participation has not always been smooth. When trying to start a business, for example, many of them have no capital or collateral to borrow money. To address this problem, the Project management team has explored possibilities of linking the women shop owners with microfinance agencies to create access to capital. So far, one memorandum of understanding was signed between the Project and Jatiya Mohila Shangstha, a microfinance institution. A journalist recently asked a male teacher at a madrassa (religious school) near the Velabari Women’s Market Section about his views on the increasing presence of women in the market. “It is all right; there is nothing wrong with it,” he said. Soft and Hard Infrastructure Go Together
The Project is successfully improving the lives of poor women and their families, thanks to the enthusiasm of the central and local project management teams as well as the innovative ideas of the gender specialists from the Bangladesh Resident Mission and the Project. The Project’s Gender Action Plan added many other women-inclusive components. For example, the local women who participated in selecting the site for flashflood refuge identified the need for separate toilet facilities and women’s private corners in the refuge in the case of medical emergencies or child birth. These facilities are now being constructed. Separate waiting spaces for men and women at 38 boat landing facilities are also being built. These are small but crucial arrangements in a society where gender segregation is the norm. The success of the Project would not have been possible without increasing the awareness of government officials and project staff on the fundamental importance of resource allocation to encourage women’s participation. The project staff now understands that “soft” and “hard” parts of infrastructure development must go hand in hand—and that supporting women’s empowerment strengthens this interface. Wahidur Rahman, Project Director, echoes this. “Addressing the software aspects in the Project has tremendously improved the implementation of the hardware components,” he says. “You can see it from the support we receive from the public for the Project in the rural areas.” By fostering these innovative schemes, the Project is helping improve rural infrastructure, raising household incomes, and creating employment opportunities for poor women. |
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