Indian women challenge patriarchy with non-traditional jobs

Non-profit groups helping women become electricians, e-rickshaw drivers

- Debarshi Dasgupta

As a nurse in a small hospital in Jabalpur, a city in central India, Ms Manjulata Patel earned about 3,000 rupees ($46.50) every month.

This meagre salary meant she could only afford to rent a rundown one-room apartment, with electrical appliances that did not function reliably.

The only electrician she could afford turned out to be a drunkard who made her feel uncomfortable, forcing her to summon a few children from the neighbourhood for protection whenever he came to her flat for repairs. He even tried to touch her "inappropriately" at times, Ms Patel, 40, told The Straits Times.

This unpleasant experience triggered a brainwave that made her reinvent herself: What if she became an electrician?

"Had there been a woman electrician, I could have called her and not faced all these problems," she said, recollecting her experiences.

Today, having finished her fourmonth course in August, Ms Patel repairs electrical components for motor vehicles for a company in Indore, a city in the state of Madhya Pradesh, earning 8,500 rupees each month.

This career breakthrough came after Ms Patel found out about Indore-based Samaan Society, one of several Indian non-profit organisations training women in non-traditional livelihoods (NTLs).

Thousands of women across the country have already been trained by these organisations to work as taxi drivers, bike mechanics, electricians, masons, plumbers and in other blue-collar jobs.

As more Indian women seek work, NTLs have become an important way to expand the range of career options available to them while addressing their growing aspirations in a country where job creation has lagged behind the several millions joining the workforce each year.

In so doing, these non-profit organisations have also helped break down gender stereotypes and financially empower women from low-income groups.