Women artisans from India gain foothold in international marketplace

A decade ago, Balabai Kamble was struggling to make a living for her family.

Like many skilled female artisans in India, she and her husband were saddled with the debt of a loan from a local trader, and making only enough handcrafted Indian kolhapuri sandals to buy the most essential of items.

"It was just enough to eat and pay for clothing - there was nothing much else in the house," she says. "Our economic condition was really bad." With a husband, daughter and two sons to support, her prospects were few and far between.

According to Madhura Chatrapathy, a trustee of Ascent, a Bangaluru-based social enterprise, Mrs Kamble's experience is typical of female artisans from the "lowest stratospheres of society" who are taken advantage of by local traders.

Despite playing a vital role in the production process, women like Mrs Kamble are largely sidelined economically, she explains. Traders loan their husbands money, tie them to exclusive contracts, then pay them such low wages that they remain indebted and impoverished.

"They are exploited," she says. "The whole family gets into trouble as the traders will not allow them to sell to anybody else. They get a very low return for their products and never get out of debt."

Joining together in a collective

Ten years ago, with the help of Ascent, Mrs Kamble and around 200 fellow kolhapuri artisans decided to pool their resources and form their own business to free themselves from this form of bonded labour. With funds from the United Nations Development Programme and India's National Leather Development Programme, the Toehold Artisans Collaborative was launched as a collection of 11 separate self-help groups.

Ascent helped the women artisans to get training in design and business skills, and through a carefully executed strategy, managed to quickly grow their business. While working mainly from home, the women found a building to share for more technical, craft making processes and were able to gain access to high-grade raw materials.

They quickly learned the value of marketing, says Toehold's general manager, K Raghu, who was brought into the business by Ascent eight years ago. "[Before Toehold was formed] they were not getting a decent profit for their products - they were not working together, just individually and for the traders," he says.

"They just produced for one person at a time. They didn't know anything about marketing."

Exporting abroad

By focusing on directly accessing new markets overseas through international trade fairs and selling products at the right price, the women, who each own a stake in the business, quickly became successful entrepreneurs in their own right.

"It's decentalised production and centralised marketing, so we are able to get a good price from our buyers," adds Mr Raghu. "We are able to procure good materials for production, good craftsmanship and good profit."

Today Toehold is a major player in the international market for ethnic footwear, supplying clientele in ethnic footwear as far afield as Australia, Italy and Japan. Between 2001 and 2003, revenues quadrupled. In the past season alone, Toehold turned over $75,000.

Forty per cent of Toehold's profits go to the individual women and their families in proportion to the quantity they have supplied to the business, while 20 per cent goes to each self-help group and 40 per cent is retained for business development.

The lives of women such as Mrs Kamble and her family have dramatically improved. She and her husband are among those that have participated in Toehold's international exhibitions abroad. Six years ago, they represented the company at a major international trade fair in Dusseldorf, Germany.

In the space of just a few years, her income has nearly quadrupled from 2,000 rupees a month to around 7,000 (approximately UK£100).

Empowering women producers

As incomes among all the 200 women have soared, their children have also been encouraged to stay on longer at school. Home life has been made much easier too. More than 80 per cent of the families now have gas connections and improved stoves.

With greater economic prosperity, the women have also gained a newfound sense of confidence, adds Ms Chatrapathy, herself a successful businesswoman. Last year a group of the women interacted with over 200 students at one of India's most highly respected MBA schools in Hyderabad, she notes, by way of example.

"In our socially highly hierarchical society, these women wouldn't normally come near me. They would stay a couple of feet away out of respect. Today they come and hug me - all their inhibitions have gone."

Mrs Kamble, too, is grateful for the way in which the collective has changed her life, adding that she hopes the example of Toehold can be of inspiration to other small-scale artisans.

"I never dreamt of this," she says. "It would be a very good thing if this could be done for other communities inside and outside India. It could let them improve and grow financially - and socially."

The experience of the Toehold Artisans Collective is detailed in 'Trading Stories: Experiences with Gender and Trade', a new publication from the Commonwealth Secretariat. Across 20 inspiring regional and country case studies, the book pulls together some of the key links between trade, gender and economic development.

Key Links:

• Gender
• Country Profile: India

Related News:

• Publication - Trading Stories: Experiences with Gender and Trade