2.1 Training for women's micro-enterprise development/women in the informal sector
2.2 Women and vocational education and training
2.3 Training manuals
2.4 Conclusion
The literature that informed this research has a number of strands: training for small and medium enterprise (SME) development, training for the 'informal sector' and self-employment, and technical and vocational education and training (TVET). These strands are themselves situated within the broader literature of non-formal education and training. Much has been written in this latter field since the 1960s, when concerns first arose in developing countries over the rising numbers of unemployed youth, high rate of school dropouts and shortage of skilled labour to fuel national economic development. However, whichever strand one focuses on, literature which deals with training specifically for women is very limited. The only recent study that we know of which is of direct relevance to this research, and which informed its design, is a UNIFEM funded study of eight micro-enterprise projects for women (Creevey 1996, see below). As already indicated in chapter 1, ever since the international community started to recognise the significant role of women in the economy, micro-finance has dominated as the central plank of its poverty alleviation strategy. The lack of interest in alternative strategies, such as the provision of technology, skills-based training or literacy, over the past decade or so has influenced the research agendas of development agencies and research foundations. Governments of developing countries have for their part concentrated their energies and resources on expanding and improving formal education. In the absence of in-depth research and evaluation around training for women's micro-enterprise development, therefore, has grown the belief that it is ineffective.
There is not space here to review the literature which examines the link between knowledge and skills acquired through formal education and women's micro-enterprise development. There is no doubt that the access which formal education provides to wider social networks, to channels of communication and information, including the print media, and to new technologies, is very important for successful businesses of all sizes. The fact that women have less access to formal education than men is a major disadvantage for them when competing for jobs. In most poor countries, many more girls drop out of primary and secondary school than do boys, and their choices within the educational system are more limited. For example, they are likely to be discouraged from taking maths, science and technology courses, and when vocational subjects are available at school, girls are usually obliged or encouraged to take courses in traditional female skill areas such as domestic science, hairdressing and dressmaking, which offer limited and low-paid job opportunities. Likewise, women's and girls' lower participation in the wide range of available non-formal education and training programmes designed to equip young people for jobs is a serious disadvantage for them (Goodale 1989, Leach 1995, 1996).
The following brief review covers published material on training for micro-enterprise development (which includes for the purpose of this study literature on training for the informal sector and self-employment) and vocational education and training, as they relate to women. It is followed by an overview of a number of training manuals in this field.
Of the few studies that exist which look specifically at training for women working in the informal sector, worth mentioning is Goodale's (1989) work for the ILO and Leach in a DFID funded study by McGrath et al (1995). Other writings - some of which is case study material - are Iyer (1991), Walsh and Nelson (1991), Jumani (1989), Wadehra (1991) and Awori (1995). The UNIFEM study reported by Creevey (1996) examines training as one of a number of inputs on women's micro-enterprise projects.
Goodale (1989) has argued that the increasing interest in training for the informal sector during the 1980s failed to recognise the involvement of women, and therefore to develop programmes and strategies which distinguish between women and men as economic producers. The failure to recognise that women and men engage in different economic activities in different sets of circumstances and therefore have different training needs has resulted in 'a relatively male-biased delineation of both skill acquisition and work in the informal sector, in which women are largely invisible' (Goodale 1989 p 1). Even where training has been targeted at women, it has often been inappropriate and ineffective because it has not sought to provide them with the means to make a viable income which would lift them out of poverty. She lists examples of this:
· agencies providing training to women (primarily NGOs) have not pursued it in a context of training for existing or potential market opportunities geared to the circumstances of women's livesAwori (1995) looks at a range of training issues around women's micro-enterprises in Africa and divides training needs into three categories: training for low-income women, for women who are already entrepreneurs, and for trainers. She suggests that programme experience shows that low-income women need training in three areas: business skills, technical skills and what she calls 'counselling in family life education' which covers nutrition, child care, family planning as well as leadership training and group maintenance (p 231). If these three strands are not offered together, or if technical inputs alone are provided, the training will not be effective. In particular, she argues that a gender awareness, value-oriented, empowerment component is crucial. Our own research confirms this finding, although we would argue that the focus of the third category of training should be on gender awareness raising and confidence-building rather than on women's reproductive role.· they have failed to provide training in business skills alongside vocational/technical skills because women's economic activities were seen as 'projects' not as 'enterprises' 6
· such projects have largely been run by generalist and volunteer community development workers with limited technical and managerial skills to impart and limited knowledge of local markets and market dynamics. Little consideration has been given to the feasibility of the productive activity, the quality of products and market opportunities.
· women have been given limited awareness of alternatives to traditional female occupations and their perception of their own employment potential has been extremely narrow. Training has usually been provided in areas such as sewing, embroidery, cooked foods and vegetable gardening, all low-profit, labour-intensive activities which lead to over-supply and can never help women out of poverty.
6 Buvinic (1986) is particularly critical of the 'welfare project' approach to women's income generation in her article entitled 'Projects for women in the third world: explaining their misbehavior' World Development, 14,5, pp 653-664
Alongside their lower levels of education and training, women are also disadvantaged comparative to men by their relative lack of access to information (about markets, credit etc), to new technology (despite evidence that they are both users and innovators, Appleton 1995), and to networks between entrepreneurs which allow informal flows of often privileged information. The importance of privileged networks was made very clear in the Indian case study (chapter 5). Programmes which promote information about training and employment opportunities are usually not accessible to women, e.g. through business associations and placement services, business pages of newspapers and radio programmes which are broadcast at times when women cannot listen to them, or advertised at places women do not frequent (Goodale 1989, p 12).
In addition, the objectives of training for women have often been poorly thought out and uncoordinated. One example is provided by Rogers (1994) who found that women's projects often failed to bring education/training and production together. From his experience many women's projects provide multiple inputs, of which one might be literacy and another income generation. He found that rarely did the one build on the other, so that learners were not encouraged to use their literacy skills practically to advance their economic activities and to increase control over their own affairs. For example, he found that the vocabulary of primers did not cover words used in economic activities, women were not encouraged to write down their financial transactions but merely to memorise them, and often the accounts of credit groups were kept by a literacy instructor or a NGO official and not by the women themselves.
More generally, it can be said that there has been a lack of gender awareness among those involved in designing and delivering training opportunities for women. As a result, the constraints operating on women in the private as well as the public (social, economic and political) spheres because of their sex have not been recognised and addressed through the training. Such constraints which define and limit women's choices in life include: lack of mobility, either for cultural or domestic reasons (child care); lack of power in the household, whether power over decision-making, resources, child bearing or the woman's own income; conflicting pressures between her triple roles (productive, reproductive, community); lack of collateral (property or land) with which to obtain credit; discriminatory labour legislation (e.g. on pay levels, on women working in certain occupations, or at night); limited access to justice and political power (e.g. for lobbying or representation, for redress against sexual violence and abuse). While men may also face constraints when seeking education, employment, credit or legal representation, particularly if they are poor, the constraints that women face are additional to those faced by men. Training programmes for women have at best addressed their practical needs (earning a living to guarantee survival) but have in most cases ignored their strategic needs, which require tackling the underlying causes of women's subordination to men (Moser 1991).
The UNIFEM funded study reported by Creevey (1996) examined a range of inputs which have a potential impact on women's micro-enterprises, one of which was training. The purpose of the study was to find out whether the impact on eight women's micro-enterprise projects differed depending on whether the project intervened comprehensively or simply, that is by providing multi-faceted support such as training in technology use, business skills, self-awareness or group organisation, or simply offering instead a single type of assistance such as access to credit or a new or improved technology. The study also sought to examine the role of mobilisation in projects for women, i.e. training of women in group organisation and management, self-awareness and empowerment to assist them to take charge of their lives. Some argue that as women succeed in business they naturally become empowered, others argue that in very conservative and restricted environments mobilisation can make them successful and more effective. The study found that the combination of new or modified technology, training and credit appeared to have a significant impact on women's income levels and quality of life (and that of their families). The link between mobilisation and increased income was less clear. This can probably be explained by the fact that mobilisation works towards longer-term goals of empowerment and does not necessarily provide resources in the short-term which can contribute to raising income levels. Nevertheless, there is a large body of literature, outside that relating to skills training, which argues that poor women in particular need awareness raising if they are to overcome the barriers that face them when they enter the public arena, which is dominated by men, e.g. Moser (1993), Longwe (1998), Williams (1994) and Parker (1993).7 Our study found clear benefits of such awareness building components for women's perception of themselves as potential businesswomen.
7 The latter two are gender training manuals.However, the study reported on by Creevey was unable to draw firm conclusions about training as an effective strategy because it did not distinguish which kinds, or amounts, of training the women received, nor what their initial skill level was. Nevertheless, it did find that the women who had received training were far more likely to perceive high project impacts than those who had not had training. 71 percent of those who had been trained in the sample said they had higher incomes as against 48 percent of the untrained women (Creevey, 1996, p 203). The intention in our own study was to close this gap in knowledge about what type(s) of training can have an impact on women's micro-enterprises.
Within the broader literature of training for micro-enterprise and SME development, there is also a concern that training has been ineffective. The Working Group on Business Development Services set up for the Donor Committee on Small Enterprise Development (funded by a number of bilateral and multilateral agencies) reports on training as one type of service, others being counselling and advice 8, information provision, technology development and transfer, and business linkages. It points out that 'until the microfinance revolution, [training] was probably the most prominent instrument used in SME development' (Gibson, 1997, p 29). It identifies the main problems with early training interventions as having been:
· too generalised relying on relatively standardised material
· too supply-driven with impractical subject matter far removed from SME realities
· delivered in an inappropriate top-down teaching style
· delivered by ill-qualified people
· insufficiently aware of cost control
· insufficiently aware of the need to encourage trainee commitment to learning
· insufficiently concerned with follow-up in situ.
(Gibson 1997, p 29)
8 In our study, this is considered as informal training.In passing, we should note that if the above analysis was gender sensitive, it would have added to the list 'insufficiently aware of the different training needs of women and men'. It is however typical of much of the literature around SME, self-employment and the informal sector, in perpetuating the invisibility of women.
Harper (1989) is particularly damning of attempts to provide business advice and training through credit organisations and entrepreneurial development programmes, often for those who have never set up in business before. Such advice and training can never be specific to the context within which the entrepreneur is working or facilitate access to privileged sources of information on which successful businesses so often depend. He argues that the only real bottleneck in micro-enterprise development is lack of credit, and that if training is to be provided it should be given to government officials so that they can learn to be more tolerant of the informal sector! He does however concede that the very poorest and most disadvantaged are unlikely to benefit from credit alone and may well need technical (rather than business) skills training. Indeed, our study confirmed that the poor are in need of training, but our evidence suggests that business rather than technical skills are the most useful and effective (when appropriately taught).
Research studies in the area of what is typically referred to as 'small and medium enterprises' or (SME) - as opposed to micro-enterprises - are not usually concerned with the smallest enterprises, usually those of the poorest, and so not surprisingly they address men's rather than women's needs. Examples are Afenyadu et al (1999) Learning to Compete, Kent and Mushi (1995) Education and Training of Artisans for the Informal Sector in Tanzania, and McGrath et al (1995) Education and Training for the Informal Sector (all funded by DFID Education Division). Other relevant works are King and McGrath (1999), Grierson (1997) and Grierson and Mackenzie (1998). Despite in some cases recognising that women have smaller businesses than men, are under-represented in vocational training and are discriminated against in the labour market (e.g. Kent and Mushi), these studies fail to engage in any gender analysis as to why this is so, and hence fail to provide recommendations that would actually address the situation (which is one of power relations). Symptomatic of this is the failure to provide sex disaggregated data (which of course may not be readily available at the country level but could easily be part of the research itself); without such data, there cannot be adequate recognition of the full extent of discrimination against women in education, training, and employment, nor can appropriate strategies be developed. This is despite the fact that women often make up half of those working in the informal sector and sometimes more.
The recent and large scale three year study by Afenyadu et al (1999) for DFID of 'learning-led competitiveness' provides a good example of this. This study sought to extend our understanding of the role that education and training plays in developing competitive enterprises in three African countries. However, women do not feature in this competitive world except in passing, although ironically some of the constraints which the authors identify are in fact gender-specific. Unfortunately, they fail to recognise them as such. For example, they speak disapprovingly of entrepreneurs who see their SMEs:
as having the primary function of providing income that can then be invested in other household activities and strategies such as education for children and land acquisition. This non-entrepreneurial outlook... reduces the likely profitability and growth of enterprises and, if not taken into account, can lead to reduced effectiveness of interventions. (p ix)Those who channel income from the enterprise into the household are most likely to be women, while men might channel it into land (or into their own 'luxuries' such as cigarettes or alcohol). At the same time, the pressures on women to provide for their families are likely to be much greater and more continuous than those on men, as in many cases (as our research shows) they are solely responsible for feeding themselves and their children. Addressing these gender-specific constraints requires an understanding and an examination of the gendered structure not only of the market but also of the household, the state and the community, all of which are institutions which impact on women and men differently (Kabeer, 1994). Without this, the chances of developing strategies which will support the development of competitive enterprises among the developing world's many women entrepreneurs are limited.
One exception to the lack of gender sensitivity in the literature is Bennell (1999a), whose study for ILO on skills development among the economically vulnerable and socially excluded does, by nature of its topic, consider women's circumstances and needs explicitly. He cites Moser who points out that most formal training for women has been closely related to gender-stereotyped tasks and occupations and in this respect it is itself part of 'deep-seated, culturally sanctioned forms of gender inequality' (p 25). Bennell continues:
A common criticism of public sector training for the poor is that, at least up until fairly recently, it has been largely 'gender blind' which is part of a wider problem of mainly male policymakers simply 'not seeing' women. Without a strong, theoretically well grounded gender perspective, training programmes have failed to address the invisibility of women in the informal sector. (p 32)This study by Bennell highlights the unhealthy division in development agencies between programmes which are intended to stimulate economic growth and therefore address those sectors of the population that are valuable economically (owners of medium or large enterprises, skilled labour etc) and those which are intended to alleviate the plight of the poor (social development programmes, e.g. in healthcare, sanitation, housing and small-scale income generation) and which target the disadvantaged and the marginalised. Women are to be found disproportionately in this latter category, not surprisingly given that two-thirds of the world's poor are estimated to be women. Despite the fact that the literature around SME is frequently located in a pro-poor or poverty alleviation perspective, it is actually concerned with enterprises which are significantly larger and more stable than those run by the very poor, and by women in particular. Interventions around training for SME in fact target the 'not so poor', these being disproportionately men, and are informed by an economic discourse of production, growth and competitiveness. On the other hand, training interventions funded by social development programmes target women disproportionately (and are informed by a social science discourse). By dealing with these two sets of interventions, and the research that informs them, separately (usually through different departments), development agencies will continue to exclude the very poor, and women, from strategies for economic growth (including SME promotion). They will therefore ensure that they remain poor and marginalised.
In the more structured and institutionalised arena of technical and vocational education and training (TVET), the same focus on traditional male skills is to be found and the same dearth of literature on TVET for women. This literature has also failed to differentiate between female and male training needs, the different types of constraints they experience in accessing the labour market, their differing level of knowledge and skill at the point of entry to training programmes, the level of resources that they command (including credit) when setting up a small business, and their anticipated outcomes. Some of the publications referred to above also deal with vocational education and/or training, albeit within the context of SMEs, self-employment and the informal sector. Others, Middleton et al (1991, 1993), Middleton and Demsky (1989), Schweitzer (1994), Gray et al (1993), Bennell (1999b) look at broad issues around policies, investments and outcomes of vocational education and training, and the development of systems of vocational training. Some of this relates to formal school-based vocational or pre-vocational education, some to non-formal vocational training in vocational training institutes. It was partly because vocational training programmes focused almost exclusively on skills appropriate for formal employment that training schemes for SME and self-employment (as reviewed above) were developed. As with the literature on training for SME development, the male focus of the TVET literature has merely served to keep women invisible in the labour market, and in so doing to reinforce the gendered nature of the workplace.
The World Bank's 1991 policy paper Technical and Vocational Education and Training is typical of this, only finding space for one and a half pages out of 72 to discuss the problems that women face in the labour market and the type of training programme needed to address them. The rest of the document is silent on women's contribution to the economy.
The emphasis of vocational training programmes on traditional male skill areas has meant that male students dominate in the better resourced 'real' vocational areas such as electronics, industrial design, carpentry and plumbing etc, while girls are confined to commercial studies (secretarial), dressmaking and catering etc. The information and communication technology (ICT) revolution has added a new male dominated area of expertise, despite the fact that it requires keyboard skills, a traditional female area - women are largely relegated to word processing while men take on the more complex and exciting technical aspects of ICT work. Even where women have been able to enrol in male dominated skill areas, this has not resulted in increased numbers. As Ellis (1990) has pointed out, the experience in the Caribbean where girls outnumber boys at all levels of education, and where there are more women with professional or technical training, there is still a gender stereotyped selection of subjects. And Coombe (1988) found that the Commonwealth experience of vocational education for girls revealed that, even where governments had introduced positive discrimination to encourage girls to enrol in technical courses, and in some cases had introduced quotas, in practice social and cultural conventions, peer pressure and the fear of sexual harassment continued to deter girls from joining. Mbilinyi and Mbughuni's (1991) study of education in Tanzania showed that girls were very under-represented in TVET (20.7 percent of trainees in 1989), continued to be found in the traditional female skill areas, and risked being further marginalised by the emphasis on 'modern' skills in high level technology.
There are three training manuals designed for women's small businesses:
Kraus-Harper and Harper (1991) Getting Down to Business: a training manual for businesswomen. This is a useful trainer's manual of basic business skills, covering how to teach basic business records, business planning, financial management etc to 'enterprising women'. However, the authors make it very clear that this is not intended for the poorest women, but only for those who are literate and have at least primary education, and who are also appropriately motivated:
The participants must also have some ambition, and idea about how to improve or expand their businesses. They must have thought clearly about how they can get away from their home and the business responsibilities.And it continues:
.. this will exclude large numbers of women, but many of them may already have demonstrated that they can do very well without formal business skills.Our study in fact showed the opposite, that poor women do need basic business skills.
The other two manuals are directed specifically at the poor and the 'less motivated'.
The Commonwealth Secretariat's (1992) Entrepreneurial Skills for Young Women: a manual for trainers provides resource materials and suggests teaching methodologies to those involved in developing entrepreneurial skills among women. It covers achievement motivation and gender issues as well as basic business skills. This manual was used as the basis of the programme designed for the women who feature in the Indian case study (chapter 5).
ILO's (1996) Rural Women in Micro-Enterprise Development: a training manual and programme for extension workers is intended for development workers involved in micro-enterprise development for women in rural areas. It provides modules on training methodology, marketing management, financial management and conducting feasibility studies. Emphasis is on learning by doing through a combination of workshops and field work.
Other manuals, not intended specifically for women, but of some relevance to this study are:
Harper M (1995) Empowerment through Enterprise. This is a manual for trainers of NGO workers working with the poor in developing their micro-enterprises. It is targeted at the poorest and shows through examples of activities that women need to be given preference in support for micro-enterprise development because of the disadvantageous situation in which they usually operate.
Rao TV et al (1990) Designing Entrepreneurial Skills Development Programmes: Resource Book for Technical and Vocational Institutions, for the Commonwealth Secretariat. This manual typifies the approach to SME and TVET in that it fails to realise that men and women have different training needs.
In addition to the above, there are many manuals for gender training in a wide range of development contexts, which are not specific to micro-enterprise development. Nevertheless, the principles underlying their approach need to be incorporated into micro-enterprise training programmes for women (and men). Some of the better known manuals for training of development workers are: Parker (1993) Another Point of View; a manual on gender analysis training for grassroots workers, Williams (1995) The Oxfam Gender Training Manual, and Moser (1993) Gender Planning and Development: theory, practice and training. Cummings et al (1994) Gender Training: the source book is a useful reference book.
The above brief review reveals the deep gender biases in the literature on both training for SME development and TVET and the relative absence of studies on training for women in these two areas. This study hopes to provide new insights into the heavy involvement of women in the informal sector and into their specific training needs.
