Tips for Field Worker s Vol 2 - Vanbandhu Kalyan Yojana

Gender interventions
The activities mentioned above may be able to reduce
drudgery and also health hazards to some extent, but they
do not necessarily reduce the burden of tasks on the
women, which is more often than not, disproportionate as
compared to that of men.
It would be important for the FW to take up the above
mentioned activities and also initiate discussions within
the community, especially with men on tasks undertaken
by men and women, time taken and amount of leisure or
relaxation time available. An exercise drawing out the time
use profile of men and women may be useful. Through
theme camps and use of traditional media the FW needs to
inform the community about the gender based division of
labour, that is division of labour that is based on whether
an individual is a man or a woman (man’s job and woman’s
job) rather than on who is free to do it at a given time. The
idea of sharing of household chores, which involves a lot of
drudgery, can be communicated to the men. During joint
discussions with men and women certain critical issues
could also be discussed like - repeated pregnancies with
SWA-SHAKTI
The FW, therefore, should
Understand the nature of ‘drudgery’ in a given context;
Identify the activities which could be undertaken to reduce
drudgery;
Identify line departments or institutions, which can be
linked to the SHG for providing training, drudgery reducing
equipments, access to existing programmes like rain water
harvesting, etc.;
Discuss various aspects with the SHGs, find out their views,
practices that could be changed – like wearing footwear;
Discuss these aspects with the community at large; and
Organise theme camps addressing gender issues in
drudgery, talk about sharing of household responsibilities,
equal division of work between boys and girls – taking care
of younger siblings, grazing cattle, fetching water, etc. while
linking these aspects to provision of equal food and
education opportunities to both boys and girls.
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