Income Generating Projects

In many income-generating activities, there is an exploitative aspect resulting from projects, where women are used mainly as cheap labour to produce inexpensive items for the urban elite. The projects are supposed to generate more income for the

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women, but the production arrangements and urban market are such that the project creates an exploitative relationship that is not very different from poorly paid contract work. That is something we have to think about - when the earnings of women from a project is very small compared to the amount of work that they put into it.

A neglected area in projects is help for women in terms of services, and assistance in developing their projects. For example, very little is provided in terms of credit, training, markets, infrastructure and legal aid in sponsored projects and in the plans and administration of some projects. In some cases, especially in pilot projects, the activity later gets dumped.