Women

Out of the Depths - Struggle and Hope in Sri Lanka

Women

"Tea and no sympathy"

The plantation-worker, especially the woman worker begins a little before dawn. Rotti - a flat wheat-cake roasted over a slow fire - constitutes the morning meal. Day after day, for over a hundred years now, this has been her routine, the woman as housewife bending over the fire preparing rotti, before she becomes plucker, bringing in a tidy sum for Sri Lanka's economy. Household chores ended by 6.30 a.m., for the morning, she sends out her husband to work on the estate, and the children to whatever is called 'school'. She takes down her familiar, friendly large basket (koodai), straps it on to her shoulder and leaves for the field, up hill or down slope, so that she can go for muster, get her tundu (slip of work for the day) and start.

For eight hours, despite the vagaries of hill-country weather, she plucks the two leaves and a bud, which have brought England fame, Sri Lanka a name and herself, no little shame. There she goes plucking the tufts of green, alone by herself, or most often, in groups, from 7 to 12 noon and from 1.30 to 4.30, the field-officer (Kanakkapulle) close at hand. She meets on other nimble (rarely ankled) feet, gradients that would take your breath away: 1:1 or 1:2.5, the green-leaf in her basket getting progressively heavier and heavier, often up to 25-301bs.

She is a woman after all. She too has her likes and dislikes, her fears and loves. She bears children. Her maternity leave lasts thirty days. And once at work after childbirth, she is allowed to nurse her child every two hours. A month after confinement she is forced to report for work in order to find money to buy rations. The factory-workers are not better off, changes of temperature in and out of the factory, from heat and cold and back again, tell on their frail health. Low calorie intake of foods and the sameness of food also tell on their health;

Morning: Rotti (baked flour pancake), and cup of plain tea.

Noon: Rotti and plain tea.

Night: Rice and curry. Dried fish, if the town is near by. Perhaps also vegetables from their garden (spinach if available).

The high, hilly regions of the tea-estates are prone to strong kachchan winds (esp. in Uva), to constant changes of temperature and inclemencies of weather including mist, hail, rain, rain of two monsoons, and thus, they must be adequately clothed. They use a vashty (thick cloth) over the head to lessen the weight of the koodai (basket). They can afford to buy only cheap saris which, because they are just one or two, easily wear out in a short time. Some women wear a long cloth tied like a koodai and carry green leaf in it. This will lessen the weight of the leaves they pluck. A poor labourer has only two blouses which alternate very month. The thought came to me that the wardrobes of some of the rich women of our towns (who live on the money these poor women earn for the country) can provide themselves with two blouses per day!

In Search of Justice

Women in the free trade zone

It is true that the Free Trade Zone (FTZ) draws a large number of women into the work force of the country (86.3 % of the total labour are women, of this 70.8 % in the garment industries) but the studies and the surveys and interviews indicate that the wages though higher than found outside the FTZ are low compared to the profits made by the companies and are inadequate when one sees the long hours of work they have to put in with their 'compulsory' overtime and conditions of work. Most of the jobs are monotonous and many women end up with bad eyesight and poor general health due to the precision of work that the job entails.

The FTZ also indicate that they want young women (72% are below 25 years of age) and single women (88 %). This indicates that they are in good health and in the prime of their working life. But unfortunately within a few years due to the conditions of work that prevail in most of the factories and the pressure under which they work, their health deteriorates.

One of the basic principles for locating an industry in the FTZ of a developing country is the advantage of obtaining relatively cheap but skilled and semi-skilled labour. And our women, finding it difficult to obtain employment elsewhere, are drawn in large numbers to the FTZ to be exploited as cheap labour. Most of these factories in which these women work are what are known as runaway industries and footloose factories that could shift at short notice if faced with rising wages. Hardly any technology is given to these women, most of the work is how to sew a button, iron a shirt collar, straighten stockings or put together two bits of wire.

it is difficult for the recognised and established trade unions to work in the FTZ and therefore the women have no-one to look after their interests. There are Worker Councils and though some of their members are elected by the workers themselves, these councils in fact act only as advisory boards.

Women in tourism

Here the majority of women have entered the "service" sector of the tourist industry. You find many women involved in the travel trade as tour guides, as 'Maids in the hotels, working at reception desks, room maids, and there is the inevitable increase in prostitution. Women entrepreneurs as guest house owners or senior managerial executives of big hotels are few chiefly because of the traditional social constraints imposed on women. They often lack the necessary capital (credit is often unavailable to them) and confidence to make decisions and take responsibility for investing in a venture in comparison to men for whom traditionally such access to enterprises is less difficult. Mostly what they do is rent a room in their home to a tourist and this is usually done only by middle and upper class women. The poorer women run the risk of ruining their reputation by letting out a mat or room since they are unable to obtain the 'respectability' image by registering with the Tourist Board (they are not up to standard) and necessarily therefore cater for the poorer tourist. Because of the social constraints the avenues of making money open to women are batik and handicraft selling and the 'service sector' of the industry and of course resorting to prostitution.

Migration of labour to the Middle East

Unable to find employment to meet the high cost of living due to inflation, many have been forced to leave the shores of Sri Lanka to find employment elsewhere. A large majority of those who obtain employment in the Middle East are females and chiefly in the capacity of housemaids. The recruits are within the age group of 18 to 45 and come from a working class or lower middle class background. While it is true that these women earn a very high income relatively - about Rs: 2,500/-per month as a housemaid and that they do send money to their homes, the effect in the long run on their children and families has found to be wanting. Reports appearing in the local press from time to time relate harrowing stories about "long hours of work, lack of leave facilities, inadequate pay, harassment by the members of the household, improper advances by male employers, even torture, cases of attempted suicide and death in mysterious circumstances.

Here there is double exploitation - exploited because of their class (housemaids come from the lower rungs of society) and exploited because of their sex too. How else can one understand the seeming indifference on the part of government and most non-governmental institutions in these migrant working women in spite of their being one of the largest foreign exchange earners of the country.

Consumerism

The liberal economy which goes with capitalist development has brought into the country various kinds of consumer items most of which are far beyond the purchasing power of the citizens. The majority of what is being imported - baby foods, domestic appliances, cosmetics, drugs, pep-up tonics and drinks, variety of easy-to-prepare foods are items that women are attracted to, for by nature and tradition women need these. To give an example the working mother and housewife want the domestic appliances and easy prepared foods, the nursing working mother welcomes the availability of baby foods and the woman brought up in the tradition that she must marry and a woman's role is to please the man, is happy to purchase the new 'keep young and fresh' cosmetics.

Change not qualitative

Whilst it is true that today's development has brought many women into the working class and there is a greater mobility of women and a sense of freedom and independence among them, a closer look into the nature of this change shows that the change is not a qualitative one. The basic question we must ask ourselves is, to what extent has this change altered qualitatively the status of women? The problem that we must look into regarding this new influx of women into the working class is whether this, though it has no doubt given an economic boost to them, has changed the traditional role of woman as being subordinate to man. Always in her activities of wanting to participate in society as an equal are restricted by an ideology imposed by the society which defines in a narrow sense what is "acceptable" for a woman.

Third World women because of their traditional social and cultural background are more susceptible to exploitation. In Sri Lanka women constitute a high proportion of the population and because of this traditional background are more influenced by the lack of money, being made to accept that it is their responsibility to see somehow that the children and husband are provided for; keep a clean and beautiful house, get married and therefore need to have a dowry and a trousseau and they are used to accepting a man to rule over them. All this type of conditioning makes it possible for a government to offer TNCs cheap labour in form of women. The stereotype woman accepted by the traditional societies and legitimised by culture and religion is well equipped to serve the interests of capital.

International capital makes use of the traditional social, cultural and religious values to further their accumulation of capital in the Third World countries by recruiting high cadres of women. Therefore, women continue to be the most exploited group driven out of necessity into accepting socially inferior and demanding jobs at low wages. Also the nature of jobs given are merely an extension of what are known as women's jobs. Women have been drawn into wage labour in manufacturing mainly what is termed .subsistence reduction'. Subsistence production includes work related to pregnancy, childbirth, nursing and education of children, as well as that required in the production and transformation of food, cloathing, housing and the physical and psychological demands associated with sexuality. In short subsistence production is largely women's work (wives, housewives and mothers) in the metropolitan countries. However, it is also necessary to include the subsistence production of peasants (men and women) in the so-called Third World because by means of such production, nature is directly appropriated for consumption.

Veronika Thomsen argues that the basic contradiction within the capitalist mode of production is the separation of subsistence production from social production and this separation is fundamentally necessary for the accumulation process. Thus women are inevitably easily subjected to exploitation in a capitalist society.

Thus we are not far wrong when we say that the type of development model that Sri Lanka has embarked upon from the time of Independence, though at various stages has given concessions to women, is predominantly one of helping to further the exploitation of women and relegating them to a more degrading position in society than ever before.

Challenges to women

We must not despair. There is much that women can do to liberate themselves. The important point is not to be fooled by apparent liberal measures. Once you understand how and to what extent capitalism uses traditional and religious values that are adverse to women, to further the oppression of women, it will be easier to organise women in their struggle for liberation.

The important question that arises out of this analysis is that the women should become aware of the personal and social reality of a capitalist system as well as the contradictions in it and how it makes use of traditional customs and religious moves for its own benefit and profit, and becoming more conscious of this and be galvanised into action for liberation. We must be alert, we must not allow capitalism to programme us into conformity to the logic of its own system and thereby because of the apparent liberal gestures become submerged into thinking that "things are not so bad for us now" or give up the struggle on the assumption that it is a historical process and wait till history corrects and ushers in an egalitarian society.

Bernadeen Silva