Is the Future of Work Flexible for Women?
Good Business Lab is working with Kalaa | Crochet Will Save The World in Neemrana to create paid work opportunities for women. Nihira R, from our marketing team, reflects on her interactions with the women participating in the initiative and the learnings from her visit.
Looking out to a hillock, next to a small building named after Babasaheb Ambedkar, is an even smaller structure with its windows boarded up, holding about 20 chairs inside. There is a fan but the women using the room don’t need it – they are used to this heat; just like my mother who hails from Rajasthan. These women, living in Neemrana their whole lives or since their marriage, remind me of the women in my mother’s hometown almost 200 kilometers south.
The women in the room chat with each other and me while crocheting small yellow and green squares. They mention how Neemrana has a Japanese SEZ (special economic zone) across the highway, where many of their fathers, brothers, or husbands work. One young woman says her mother works in a plant making steel rings for tires. They tell me there’s not much else to do here. One woman, who came to the industrial town after marriage, says she doesn't like it and hopes her children find jobs in cities like Delhi or Gurgaon. Another woman with a soft chuckle, counters that it isn’t that bad and asks me to sing. I laugh and hiccup my way through a 1980s classic Hindi track, “Mera Dil Bhi Kitna Pagal Hai”. She joins in, singing much better, so I stop. Twenty minutes later she has sung four incredible Hindi songs and is onto her fifth. When I ask her about one of the older songs I didn’t recognize, she says she has only heard these songs on the radio.
Most of the women I am speaking to are part of an initiative by Good Business Lab and Kalaa Sakhi, providing flexible paid opportunities to women. The project has two arms: one group of women works at a workshop, crocheting squares for Kalaa’s handicrafts, while another group does the same work from home, in a more flexible manner. Kalaa collects the raw materials regularly and sends them to their centers to be made into products like quilts and coasters.
Initially focusing on rural women in places like Jharkhand and Karnataka, the current project in Neemrana represents a shift to a semi-industrial town with little agricultural work for women to engage in, from making finished products to producing raw materials.
The Rajasthan State Industrial Development & Investment Corporation (RIICO) has attracted major Japanese companies to Neemrana to set up production facilities. Today, the town’s economy depends on this Japanese zone and its 15th-century fort, which boosts tourism. Agriculture is limited but animal husbandry remains common with goats dotting the roads almost as much as Neem trees, the town’s namesake.
The first house we visit has two goats penned outside the door. The women living there are pairs of sisters who marry into the same household, a common agreement in the area. In rural areas, women juggle agricultural work with domestic duties. That could mean weeding fields, waking up at 5 a.m. to feed or milk cows, caregiving an elderly or minor member at home, walking kilometers to draw water, or of course, cooking. But in Neemrana, women’s challenges are different. There are almost no farms left; produce comes from roadside vendors, and water is delivered to their doorstep, with the labor of collection performed by women.