New York Times (May 21, 2012)
ay 21, 2012, 12:09 AM
Stitching Lingerie Improves Women’s Lives in South India
By CHARUKESI RAMADURAI
Courtesy of World Bank “Pudhu Vazhvu” Project, Tamil Nadu
Women make brassieres in the “Intimate Fashions” factory in
Guduvanchery, Tamil Nadu.
S. Subhashini’s name means “she who speaks well.” However, the
25-year-old woman, who is from the Tiruvannamalai district of Tamil
Nadu, has not been able to hear or speak from birth.
She overcame her disabilities to get a bachelor’s degree in commerce
from St. Louis College for the Deaf in Chennai, a school for the speech
and hearing impaired, but she could not find a job after graduating in
2007.
Then in 2009 a recruiting team from Intimate Fashions, a Tamil Nadu
manufacturer that makes bras for the American lingerie retailer
Victoria’s Secret, came to her hometown. The Intimate Fashions team
hired hundreds of young women from Tiruvannamalai, including Ms.
Subhashini, to work in their factory as part of a project sponsored by
the state government and the World Bank to empower women.
Now a confident young woman, Ms. Subhashini says through an
interpreter, “I’m very happy to have found a job and a purpose in life.”
Courtesy of World Bank “Pudhu Vazhvu” Project, Tamil Nadu
Subhashini, one of the 16 differently abled women workers at the
“Intimate Fashions” factory in Guduvanchery, Tamil Nadu.
Four years ago, as part of its corporate social responsibility
initiatives, Intimate Fashions decided to join the state government’s
Tamil Nadu Empowerment and Poverty Reduction Project, which was 75
percent financed by the World Bank with $274 million. The project,
called Pudhu Vaazhvu (“new life”), sent 1,800 women who had only a
primary school education to work at Intimate Fashions. All of them were
from 26 districts that were identified by the state government as
economically disadvantaged.
Guduvanchery, 20 kilometers, or 12.4 miles, south of Chennai, is home
to the Intimate Fashions factory that makes brassieres under the
Victoria’s Secret brand. Intimate Fashions manufactures seven million
bras a year, or one-tenth of all products sourced by Victoria’s Secret,
generating $40 million in revenue.
Inside the large manufacturing unit in Guduvanchery, peppy Tamil film
music plays on the speakers as women work amid mountains of brightly
colored bras. The factory now employs 2,500 women over 18, and 92
percent of them are from families that are below the poverty line from
the districts covered under the program.
In a region where several foreign companies like Ford and Nokia are
competing for workers, Intimate Fashions found that employees were
quick to learn and willing to stay on for at least a few years.
“It has been a great partnership,” says Prasad Rege, general manager
for operations at Intimate Fashions. “But for the support of the Pudhu
Vaazhvu project, there would have been a question mark on our future.
And for these women, Intimate Fashions has been like a second home.”
All workers are paid the minimum monthly wage of 3,500 rupees ($65),
and after the training is completed, which usually exceeds four weeks,
there is an added incentive of up to 200 rupees per day. In the
morning, they get a nutritional hot beverage instead of coffee, since
many of them are anemic, and they have access to free spoken English
and personal grooming classes.
This is only one instance where the Pudhu Vaazhvu project has been able
to provide a livelihood to their target group of needy women, deserving
youth and the disabled. Under the Village Poverty Reduction Committee
(VPRC) program, 64,000 self-help groups have been formed in the
selected districts, enabling women to take control of their lives and
finances. These poverty reduction committees are managed and monitored
by the community, thus doing away with middlemen as well as
nongovernmental organizations.
The beneficiaries, once identified and approved by the community, are
trained in the skills needed for the livelihood that they choose, with
dairy, weaving, goat rearing and pottery being the most popular.
Livelihood specialists and mediators come in only when required, for
example, to connect trained youth with the Human Resources department
in different companies or to find markets for the products made by the
self-help groups.
Most of the work is otherwise managed by the women themselves, women
who, by their own admission, had never stepped out of their homes on
their own prior to the project.
“Now I even go to the bank and do all the work for my VPRC by myself,”
says G. Mala, secretary of the Village Poverty Reduction Committee in
Mamandur town. “I could not have even dreamed of this five years ago.”
Pudhu Vaazhvu has been so successful that in 2010 the World Bank called
it one of the best global projects they have financed. What is
particularly notable about the project is that it has a clear exit
strategy once the current term of operations ends in 2014.
“We have been training the women to get ready for the time when they
have to completely take over and keep the show running,” says P.
Amudha, the project director. “So far, it looks like they will succeed.”
For the participants, the most significant benefit of these projects is
the self-esteem that comes from earning a decent income and being
independent.
P. Jaya, 25, comes from a poor family in Nagapattinam, where her father
is an agricultural laborer. “I am now able to save more than 50,000
rupees ($920) per year,” she said during a recent interview. “I cannot
still believe that my parents are able to buy jewelry for my marriage
with the money I send.”
More important to her, her town’s residents show her a deference that
an unmarried woman her age rarely receives. “My parents ask for my
advice, and when I go back home, my neighbors treat me with a new
respect,” she says.
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