{"id":11248,"date":"2018-04-02T09:37:48","date_gmt":"2018-04-02T09:37:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/womenandmedia.org\/?p=11248"},"modified":"2018-04-02T09:37:48","modified_gmt":"2018-04-02T09:37:48","slug":"rural-women-activists-share-their-biggest-successes-and-battles-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/womenandmedia.org\/si\/rural-women-activists-share-their-biggest-successes-and-battles-ahead\/","title":{"rendered":"Rural Women Activists Share Their Biggest Successes \u2013 and Battles Ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsdeeply.com\/womensadvancement\/articles\/2018\/03\/23\/rural-women-activists-share-their-biggest-successes-and-battles-ahead\">newsdeeply.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>At the Commission on the Status of Women in New York, we speak with activists from Sri Lanka, India and the Philippines about the progress they\u2019ve made on economic advancement for women in their communities \u2013 and the challenges that lie ahead.<\/p>\n<p>Sepali Kottegoda is an academic, women\u2019s rights activist and technical adviser on women\u2019s economic rights and media at the Women and Media Collective in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n<p>Progress Made: It\u2019s a complex issue \u2013 but the migration of women to Middle East countries or what we call West Asian countries. Women go into the international informal sector and most often they do not have the protection of even local laws, if there are any. Some countries don\u2019t have local laws that protect domestic workers.<\/p>\n<p>However, look at what happens when these women return \u2013 they bring money. They have been sending money home, they have built their houses, sent their children to better schools, nutrition has gone up. There has actually been this change in women\u2019s roles in society as income earners. [Then, when] other women go, they are much more confident than they were 30 years ago. So it\u2019s an obligation of the government to ensure their safety, but recognition has to be given that this has actually made a huge difference in women\u2019s ability to make decisions for themselves and for their families on finances.<\/p>\n<p>Progress Needed: Where we still have to make tangible progress is in challenging patriarchal norms.<\/p>\n<p>I think what\u2019s very important in unpaid care work is to distinguish the emotional bonds that there are and the gender norms that expect women to take on the work of unpaid care.<\/p>\n<p>When I have started talking about unpaid care work in Sri Lanka, I\u2019ve had usually one of two responses. One is, \u201cWhy do you want to question this? This is what [women] do because [they] love their families and you are coming in and you are trying to bring in something that is not there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This mostly comes from men, but women kind of squirm a little. They understand what I\u2019m saying but for them it\u2019s like breaking their emotional bonds. What I say is, \u201cNo one is questioning the emotional bonds. We all do it \u2013 I do it \u2013 but it is work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Why is it that we have to abide by some definition of work that keeps the work that women do completely out of the picture? Our population [in Sri Lanka] is close to 21 million, out of which 7 million are designated as being outside the labor force \u2013 that is, they are economically inactive. Out of that 7 million, 5 million are engaged in housework. We have these 5 million women who are not considered to be contributing to the economy of the country.<\/p>\n<p>Many of the development agencies speak about getting women into the labor force, but they don\u2019t talk about unpaid care work. Number one: Recognize unpaid care work. Define it. Following from there [can be] very clear employer policies that [would] recognize men\u2019s role in care within the household. In countries like ours, if men say, for example, \u201cMy child is sick, I need to take leave,\u201d the employer asks, \u201cWhy can\u2019t your wife take leave?\u201d There are men who want to take care of their children [but] it\u2019s kind of understood that they are not required to do so or [others] will say, \u201cOh, this man is under his wife\u2019s thumb.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: newsdeeply.com At the Commission on the Status of Women in New York, we speak with activists from Sri Lanka, India and the Philippines about the progress they\u2019ve made on economic advancement for women in their communities \u2013 and the challenges that lie ahead. Sepali Kottegoda is an academic, women\u2019s rights activist and technical adviser [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11249,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,54,43,24,29,32,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-care-work","category-domestic-work","category-economic-rights","category-featured","category-gender-and-political-economy","category-migrant-rights","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Rural Women Activists Share Their Biggest Successes \u2013 and Battles Ahead - Women &amp; Media Collective<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/womenandmedia.org\/si\/rural-women-activists-share-their-biggest-successes-and-battles-ahead\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"si_LK\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Rural Women Activists Share Their Biggest Successes \u2013 and Battles Ahead - Women &amp; Media Collective\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Source: newsdeeply.com At the Commission on the Status of Women in New York, we speak with activists from Sri Lanka, India and the Philippines about the progress they\u2019ve made on economic advancement for women in their communities \u2013 and the challenges that lie ahead. 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