Family, Economy and Women- Headed Families

By Thavarasa Tharshan

Introduction:

According to women activists, the level of achievement of the economic situation of the women- headed families has not reached to a satisfactory level even after 5 years to the end of the 26 year long war in Sri Lanka. Owing to this, the government has established a dedicated Ministry and Departments, which implement various projects specially designed to address the prevailing issues and to improve the standard of life of the people in the North and East.  Moreover some voluntary organizations and Tamil Diaspora are implementing numerous programs to improve the livelihood of the women- headed families in this particular region. Hence the objective of this article is to analyze criticism of women activists who carry out women development programs in the Northern and Eastern region of the country within the given context.

Formation of Women-Headed Families

The war has had a large impact in the formation of women headed families in considerable numbers in the North and East of the country. These families lost their male supporters in many ways. Some of them were recruited by rebels and were killed in the battle; some civilians were victims to artilleries and air strikes whereas some others were abducted with the allegations of providing information to rebels and were killed by paramilitary groups; and the rest joined the armed forces and scarified their lives for the country. Further to these, there are very few women- headed families, who have lost their male partners due to natural causes or have separated due to misunderstandings. The tragedy of this situation is that most of these women are still in the age group of 18- 35 years.

Women Headed family, North Province

Northern Province consists of the Districts of Jaffna, Killinochchi, Mullaitivu, Mannar and Vavuniya. These districts have been facing socio- economic and political instability throughout the period of war. None of the districts of the Northern Province were left without being exposed to the consequences of war, but the extent of the damage only differs. In North the majority is Tamil and Muslims and Sinhalese are minorities. Tamils are having a rich and closely- woven cultural background in which the caste system is an integral part. Social and religious beliefs are given priority than the feelings of the people within this system. It has not been given up even in the post war context.

Here in this context the alarming reality to be emphasized is that the social structure and age- old values have become a hindrance in addressing this pressing issue of improving the quality of life of women- headed families, for they are playing a major role in this particular community even though the times and attitudes have been changed in the rest of the world. As we know women who lost their husbands are looked down upon and called by different names in Tamil for example “the white saree”, “the one who got her husband killed”, “the one who doesn’t have a life”, etc.. The Tamil societies consider them to be unlucky and are not allowed to participate in any auspicious occasion. Even though this cannot be justified, it has been followed by the society as a deeply- rooted tradition and still the society maintains this despite the attitudinal changes of the modern world. Hence this has become the barrier which is unbreakable for the women activists who are working to address the issues of the women- headed families in the Tamil community. 

Cultural issues in Traditional Community

Given the traditional beliefs men do not consider marrying a widowed woman as his first marriage. Even if they agree to marry a widowed woman and get married, which rarely happens, they tend to leave the wife in a short period. Even the men who marry such women as a second marriage, the trend is relatively high for them to leave the women due to misunderstandings. In some cases where the husbands are reported to be missing, women tend to live together with another partner and due to the absence of legal separation of previous marriage they also do not continue to be with them for long. This situation has brought about some other issues such as giving birth to children outside marriage which is considered disrepute by both the society and the family. Some of the women have chosen prostitution and live an immoral life since they do not have any other choice left to support their families and to satisfy their feelings and needs as human beings. In contrary to this, there are some other women who are living a successful life after their second marriage or those who are brave enough to stand on their own feet to support their family having controlled their feelings. Given this situation, therefore it is necessary to economically empower such women to have a quality life with their self esteem.

Family Economic

Factors deciding the economic situation of women- headed families are not solely depending on a livelihood. Their family background, number of members, sources of income, savings, bank loans, monthly expenditure and ways of getting financial or material aid also should be considered in deciding that. When considering the members of a family, the number of dependents, their educational level, age etc. should be taken into account. When it comes to education, there are various other costs involved, even though there is a free education system which provides text books and uniform material to the students. If the children are studying in a standard school parents have to bear the costs of donations for admission, annual fee of School Development Society, exercise books and other stationery needs, contributions to other events and educational tours, which is difficult to afford for a poor family. Since the education for children under age 14 is compulsory, economically unstable families have to face these difficulties to educate their children and for the children to maintain an equal status with their classmates their families have to pay the price. Therefore the monthly cost for the education of children in a family should be determined based on the number of children who are schooling.

Besides, the health expenditure for the treatment of women and other family members affected physically and mentally due to war, also should be considered in designing programs to support women- headed families. Even though they get the treatments from government hospitals for minor diseases free of charge, there are some cases which have to be referred to the National Hospital, Colombo or private channeling centers for which they have to allocate a portion of money of their income.

Struggle of Self employment project

Although they struggle to survive with what they earn from self- employment such as poultry farming, goat raring, sewing, home gardening and being engaged in small industries with the support of the Ministry of social services, the Ministry of Economic Development and other Non- Governmental Organizations in the mode of self employment investments and aid to upgrade the standard of life, they still face difficulties due to issues arise in their self- employment. They have not been able to achieve the expected development level due to selection of same self- employment opportunity by many, lack of proper marketing system, limited market for their products and natural disasters such as climatic changes, floods and droughts.

Most of the community- based organizations that work for these women- headed families do not have proper skills to introduce new technology or to implement an experience- sharing mechanism, even though they are perfect in measuring the success and failure of the program by the label “Monitoring and Evaluation” and ever keen in introducing their next program. This situation is created because these programs are implemented without having done proper background survey and proper analysis with incompetent cadre who lack proper knowledge in this field.   

More over the housing project introduced by the government which is called “The Housing Project with the Participation of People” also has made women- headed families to earn to pay bank loans. The loans for self- employment also have made them pay loan interest throughout their lifetime. This cannot be considered as development but can be considered as creating a group of women who earn to pay interest in the name of women development.

It is difficult for the women employees who work in the government or private sector too to earn enough to achieve a desired standard of life. It is compulsory for them to work for 8 hours and moreover they have to do overtime work challenging the social norms sometimes. It is a psychological war for them to break the social barriers where the society expects women to be home before nightfall and attending their duties caring for children and doing other house chores. Further the perception of the society of a woman who comes home late is not that positive. The narrow- mindedness of the society has created more problems in their lives. According to them they will not be able to succeed only with the economical development as far as an attitudinal change is in place. They often complain of the society’s negative attitude towards them which does not accept them communicating or maintaining a professional relationship with a male coworker.

There are some exceptional cases of women- headed families which are getting threatened by the loan providers or employers. Some brokers of loan providers expect sexual bribery when the women delay to pay their loan installment. A very few cases have come out in this regard and most of the women do not reveal their actual situation being afraid of possible social humiliation. Therefore it is difficult to measure the gravity of such cases and thus the situation continues without being resolved. Due to these situations women are not willing to become a self- employer.

Some women who are determined of coming out of these circumstances leave their children with other family members or relatives and leave for Middle- East for employment. This step of them indicates that they are ready to face any difficulty for the betterment of their children. But the worst scenario of this situation is that they have to undergo sexual harassment whereas their children also get abused by the guardians or others.

These women are trying only to improve their standard of life but not worried about the savings or investment since they are living in a region where rehabilitation is going on. In reality it is difficult to focus on savings while struggling hard to manage their living expenses and paying off loans with interest due to ever increasing inflation rates. Therefore what is observed is that there is no improvement in the livelihoods of women- headed families in general even though numerous programs are implemented. 

Recommendations and conclusion

Having taken the above factors into consideration, the following recommendations can be presented in order to bring about sustainable economic development to the women- headed families in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. It is recommended that their personality has to be developed and they need to be psychologically empowered to face the societal barriers. While fulfilling their social needs, career guidance and technological knowledge also should be provided to them in order to go abreast with the modern trends. Further, loans with low interest rates and continuous guidance should be given to them while providing experience sharing opportunities of similar income generation groups. Moreover savings should be promoted and their children should be provided with educational support and health facilities. Visiting their workplaces regularly and providing feedback is also a must. This kind of interventions only can improve the status of the women- headed families in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. Otherwise both the family and economy will be a burden for them.