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Village women in conservative India's southern state of Tamil Nadu are challenging age-old perceptions - which see females in traditional roles as homemakers - by taking on jobs in the regions' booming manufacturing sector, in industries producing everything from lingerie to electronics.
The jobs - which are turning women as young as 18 years old into breadwinners - are not only helping lift their families out of poverty, but making their largely patriarchal communities see daughters as assets, rather than burdens for whom dowry must be paid to get them married.
Intimate Fashions India Pvt Ltd, manufacturer for American lingerie retailer Victoria's Secret, employs 2,500 workers - mostly rural women - at its factory in Tamil Nadu's Kanchipuram district, 30 km (18 miles) south of the city of Chennai.
Under a public-private partnership, supported by the World Bank, over 400 firms such as Intimate Fashions, Intel, Samsung and Nike - who need workers - are linked with poor rural village communities, where youth are jobless. Mamandur village in Kanchipuram is one village now sending its girls out to work.
Young women, who would have left school early, married young and been confined to their villages doing household tasks such as collecting water from boreholes or looking after children, are now delaying marriage, and working and supporting their families - gaining them respect in these male-dominated communities.
"Divya earns more than I thought possible," says Latta Gunbendran, mother of 19-year-old Divya, who works at Intimate Fashions and earns a monthly salary of 7,000 rupees ($130). "My two younger girls can go to school and we have bought a fridge, a television and even tiled our floors in our house. She is like the son I never had. She brings me and my family respect."
Photo credits:
REUTERS/Babu Babu
ALERTNET/ Nita Bhalla
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