Kinshuk

Name Batch 71 Contact No. 8238144400 Subject CSR Assignment 1

Agrawal

1) Explain the ‘Gender equality’ goal in detail. How ‘Jaipur rugs’ has
created gender equality through short term results leading to long term
impact.

United nations, through its targeted year 2030 agenda, desires the World to move on path of
sustainability and resilience simultaneously eradicating poverty from all dimensions. Considering current
facts in Year 2020 this goal seems to be very ambitious. Gender equality is one of the 17 goals, which UN
has adopted, and this is highly linked with other SDG.

Before understanding the gender equality goal, lets first look at few facts and figures –

 Just over 48% of adult females in India are termed as literate vs 61% for males
 Women Labour force participation in India is under 30%
 Globally 33% females experience sexual or physical violence in their lifetime
 Worldwide, less than 25% representation of women in parliaments
 More than 750 alive girls and women globally, got married before the age of 18 years

Traditionally, women are considered as inferior compared to male gender and they were assigned
certain specific jobs segments. We cannot argue as what was the scenario in past and how these rules
were framed, may be at that time security was the biggest challenge in front of human race and hence
certain rules got framed but today we have numerous examples in front of us, which proves earlier
assumptions irrelevant in today’s context.

When female population constitutes 50% of the total World human population, we just can’t afford to
ignore them. Not only it will have short- and long-term social impact but economic consequences too.
Social unrest, non-achievement of desired economic growth, malnourishment among children and social
upbringing of future generations etc. are few areas, which are getting impacted because of gender
inequality. Gender equality means to remove discrimination in all forms be it in form of perception,
opinion and expectations etc. need to end all types of exploitations. Desired ecosystem to be created
where female can take-up the leadership position with confidence. Once they are empowered, there
will be larger participation in economy, helping in reducing the inequality index. The increased
participation will also help in reducing the crime rates as they will no more be treated as weaker sex.

The goal is to make available equal access of all types of resources and opportunities in the political,
socio-economic, healthcare and education to make this World more prosperous, better and safer place
to live.
Jaipur Rugs
Mr. Nand Kishor Chaudhry, who started this organisation as a promoter, was aware of the pain of
perceptions and opinions, which Indian women suffers. He himself has three daughters and had seen
the social stigma faced by his wife of not able to give birth to a male child, though finally they were
blessed with a son too.

Indian carpet industry was considered as a subset of handicraft industry and by borrowing Rs.5000 from
his father, Mr. Nand kishor Chaudhry started his business in 1978. Today this organisation, which was
started in 1999 as a fallout of one adversary, is impacting more than 40000 vendors and employees of
which 80% are female. The business model is simple enough to take off the costly middlemen. They did
not invest in centralised production facility, so no migration was there. Women, who started earning
more because of direct procurement and subsidies, started reinvesting or making an increased
expenditure at their base locations. Staying at base locations helped weavers to control their cost of
production and de-risking the supply chain for the organisation.

Every major activity of them is having short and consequently long-term impact on the life of weavers
esp. Women. We can simply list down few examples to explain the interlinking between all these –

1) They helped in installing looms at artisan’s home with their fund and the help of government.
The immediate effect was a sustained supply for organisation and near sustained income for
artisan. Many Women became the bread earner of their family. They were able to feed their
family better and became more exposed to outer World. In long term impact, we can witness,
changed status of women in their family and village. Since cost of production was not increased,
with the help of efficient logistics, value for money products were shipped out in the World,
giving a status to Indian carpet industry.
2) Competition among the weavers increased as they are more connected through common
platform, increased demands from customers helped the weavers to look for more innovative
designs and hence further enhancing the entire value chain.
3) By increasing its reach to 5 Indian states, centres of excellence got created rather than in
isolation, further enhancing the long-term benefit.
4) Despite most of them are not in centralised location but since they are part of a large group,
they can raise their voice at different forums. This might be contributing in reducing crime
against these women.
5) Financial prudence and literacy are another area, where these women have improved and now
they are readying second line, so a chain of development has started.
6) Since Jaipur rugs operates and-to-end business model, right from sourcing the raw material to
finished product, they are also impacting in reducing the wool waste.
7) Overall activities of organisation, where females are in positions from leadership to weaver, it is
creating a brand and social identity for the country, giving much needed status to their female
workers.
 2) Explain you take on practical aspects of gender equality and women
empowerment

Since the childhood, we have seen that women are mainly for household goods and men are bread
earners. Ideas of women in areas other than household were never encouraged. Many young women
are perceived as an object rather than human being.

Gender equality does not mean to give jobs to females rather there should be equal opportunities
available to all sexes of the society and then capability and certain general rules should rule.

Practically I am of the opinion as if there will be larger participation in the economy then there are fair
chances that consumption of variety will improve instead of tilting balance towards a set of items.
Increased social respect for women will reduce the crime rates esp. Rape and physical assault. Women
in leadership position can bring in new aspects or newness in leadership. Indra Nooyi, who headed
Pepsi, utilised her expertise as a mother, wife and daughter etc. to bring more insights to the
organisation and hence collaborating and guiding her team to new success.

Productivity is another aspect, which can be increased. Human resource is the one of the costliest
resources, but many human hours gets waste without any genuine reason. Say for example, a female
weaver in remote village of Rajasthan and her household electricity bill need to be deposited or some
complaint need to be filed with the department. If she is having a sense of empowerment, she herself
can do these things without waiting for any other. This seems to be a simple example but has a far
deeper result in confidence.

Women empowerment will come from lot of small things. It’s not like that only if the women will come
in leadership position then only it will be counted as empowerment. Pay parity is one aspect to be
considered seriously. Expecting a working woman to work throughout the day and then do all the
household works should be counted in cruelty. They should feel empowered to take decisions related to
their career, education, children, shows they would like to watch and dressing etc. Real empowerment
will only come when traditional and orthodox perception and opinions may change.

References

https://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/youth/facts-and-figures