Patricia de Rivas¹

This article describes the work of the Gregorio Apaza Women's Center in Bolivia which supports the development of "Productive Units" for low income women in the urban sectors of La Paz and El Alto de La Paz. These productive units include, to date, four daycare centers, a laundry, an apron sewing collective and a jelly making collective.

raising issues

After four years of work at the Women's Center with Productive Units (PUs) we can draw some definite conclusions, articulate many concerns, and formulate recommendations for the future. Some of the questions our organization must address are the following: Are productive activities really viable? Do they really empower women? Are they sustainable over the long term?

In order to find the answers to these questions, it is important to share and analyze our experiences with other practitioners and researchers, taking into account the differences in countries and populations that affect the development of the PUs. It is also necessary to demystify and clarify the purpose of PUs in order to fully explore their potential.

points of departure

A brief sketch of the context in which the PUs function will help put our discussion of concrete experiences into perspective. First, PUs function within a specific ethnic and cultural context. The populations of La Paz and El Alto de La Paz are primarily composed of Aymara (an indigenous Indian group) migrants from rural areas who have been forced by the agrarian crisis to look for alternative sources of income. They settle on the sides of the hills that surround the city of La Paz or in El Alto, at 4,000 meters above sea level. The women first migrate as children or adolescents and usually seek work as domestic laborers, thus forming links with the city and adopting its language, Spanish. After they marry or form common law relationships, they usually go to work on their own in the informal sector. These low-income women identify strongly with their cultural background and ethnicity.

Second, the severe national economic crisis of the last decade is a decisive factor in causing women to work outside the home. Women come to be aware of the crisis because of their increasing inability to fulfill traditional roles due to rising costs of food, clothing, education, health, etc. Their difficulties are aggravated when their husbands don't earn enough, are unemployed, or are simply absent.

In these circumstances, women tend to undertake individual activities in the informal sector, usually as street vendors. In La Paz, 62% of the economically active population in the commercial or service sector is female². Of the 41,615 street vendors, 7% are women.³

There are various reasons why women choose these alternatives and we have found that some of these criteria are inconsistent with the requirements and functioning of the PUs.

• Women do not abandon their domestic work when they work outside the home.
• They must have flexible schedules in order to meet their household "duties".
• Proximity of the workplace is important as well as the ability to work while children are present.
• This type of "employment" requires minimal training and start-up capital.
• This type of activity can be combined with other survival activities such as participation in Clubes de Madres (Mother's Clubs) and other diverse associations.
• Women can maintain ties with their communities of origin and return to them on important occasions for planting, harvest, and patron saint festivities.

Within this framework, the Gregorio Apaza Women's Center developed both economic and ideological-cultural activities for poor urban women. Why did we choose to work along economic lines? For the following reasons:

• The women had an immediate need for new ways to generate income.
• The usual alternative of working as a street vendor accentuates women's isolation without making her more aware of it or of the subordination and discrimination she suffers as a woman.
• Women have to engage in economic work to generate family income, as well as analysis and consciousness-raising activities, in order to exercise their right to participate in decision-making and redefine power relations within the family and community. The PUs helped them meet such goals, particularly with regard to personal matters (for example, disposing of personal earnings, studying, etc.).
• Collective, socially valued work allows women to increase their self-esteem and to plan, question, and organize to confront inequality on both public and personal levels.
• The PUs provide a very important starting point for women to actively participate in the larger society.

our first questions

Had we made the right observations? To a degree, yes. However, experience proved our observations to be incomplete. Certain important factors and variables were overlooked and we were forced to revise many of our assumptions.

First, in a crisis economy like ours, the limits of the market and the effects of the current government's New Political Economy (export-oriented, free market pricing, free exchange, wage freezes) considerably restrict the chances for the PUs to succeed:

• Because their operating costs are high;
• Because real labor costs are not compensated;
• Because it is very difficult to compete with the black market.

This affects the profitability of micro-enterprises and tends to turn them into just another strategy for surviving the crisis.

Second, women's priority, due to their urgent need for income, is income generation with a quick return. This translates into a search for higher earnings rather than into an entrepreneurial perspective on the development of their PU, which would be more likely to generate usable income in the medium and long term.

What then is the real economic outlook for the Productive Units? Collective generation of self-employment? Should the PU aim to cover ALL costs (including labor), depreciation, and credit? Should the PU ignore all the logic of micro-enterprise that points to their economic potential?

our first answers

It is not easy to find the answers to these questions. The answers seem to differ among different groups of women in ways that are still unclear. For example, certain groups use a combined strategy for survival, relying on a sales stand in the local market, membership in a Mother's Club and/or a religious group and engaging in one or more productive projects or services.

Prestige, social status, the direct benefits of food donations or subsidized projects (such as those of non-governmental relief agencies) all seem to figure in the decision whether to participate in those PUs of the type we support which are based on credit and envision women's transformation or to engage in other strategies. One project we promoted that had higher profit potential (and required more days per month or hours per day of work) was limited by competing time requirements for these other strategies. Furthermore, the mixed strategies for survival generally render more income (in money or in kind) than the productive projects alone. These and similar concerns have to be addressed in the near future.

The concept of work and how it can be organized around household tasks is another previously mentioned factor. Having to work for 7 to 8 hours, daily, outside the home and away from the children, as is often required of PU participants, is difficult to accept, especially when compared to street vending which, as indicated, is more flexible and feasible for the woman with children.

Thus, what matters is not only the mix of different subsistence activities but also the way they can be coordinated with household work. What kind of P U activities can have these characteristics and compete on the open market? Also, can these types of PUs meet the women's income expectations? While there is clear demand for work which generates more income, how can that work generate more income within such time limits? What factors influence other women to give priority to the PU work as the main alternative to the crisis? What makes them willing to work 8 hours daily outside the home?

Finally, does all of this mean that there are different economic and work expectations for different productive projects? Should an NGO like ours, which works with poor urban women, base its proposals on that diversity? While we do not have definite answers to these questions, these are factors that cannot be overlooked when developing a PU .

Another secondary factor relates to the problem of credit. We do not donate start-up capital or subsidize projects since experience shows that instead of promoting identification with an economic project, this practice creates a beggar mentality, such as has been largely fostered by food donations from the Mother's Clubs. Working with medium term supervised credit (based on the profitability of the projects), however, is difficult. For example, we have found that while groups of women expect to work for income, this expectation does not easily lend itself to the idea of credit and the image they have of being "debtors". In a few of the groups, women personally accepted a corresponding percentage of the debt, each paying for part of the PU property. In these cases, credit was welcomed and enhanced the women's entrepreneurial identity as owners of the PU. This leads us again to question the economic premise of PUs: Donation? Credit combined with a subsidy? Or supervised credit?

In summary, it seems that PU development among low income urban women not only depends on the viability of the activity within the current context of the economic crisis, but also on the expectations and demands of the beneficiaries and the need to match their requirements with our aims and institutional purposes.

possibilities

How have the women been affected by their experiences with these activities? While women receive support for their productive activities from other women in the group, they also go through a process of self-reflection and analysis of their position in society as poor Aymara migrant women. They become part of the community and begin to analyze the country's problems from their distinct perspective as women.

What have they achieved?

One of the most important results we have observed is the significant empowerment of women on the personal, group, and community levels. Their increased self-esteem, most evident in the individual (but reflected by the group) can be seen, according to the women themselves, in greater personal security and in a feeling of belonging to a group of women with whom they not only work but share problems and make decisions. They develop solidarity with each other as women.

The PU becomes an entity where the home, husband and children are momentarily superseded and the women can put themselves first and not feel servile. Once stepping out of their isolation, the women become aware of their common problems as women and of ways to solve them. Organization around the PU thus serves more than an economic function; it empowers women in other dimensions.

Within the family, a woman who is generating regular household income because her husband's is insufficient or non-existent slowly but surely begins to question existing inequalities and power relations in the home. The women not only begin to participate in important decisions but they do so without being afraid to disagree.

When, for example, a woman in a group was beaten or insulted by a partner, the group assumed her defense by confronting the aggressor as a group and obliging him to publicly apologize. Because this type of response affects the husband's and family's reputation, it is an effective type of social censure that notably, though not totally, diminishes violence. However, these are isolated, exceptional answers which sometimes heighten women's insecurity in the home, since there are no public or social entities to which women can resort to demand the defense of their rights. In this sense, women have no real legal protection and no way to prosecute their husbands.

PUs also serve to demystify what is considered traditionally "female" activities. The experience of working together leads women to challenge the notion that they belong in the home. Work outside the home is not only justified as a way to earn income; some women defend their right to work outside the home for their own fulfillment.

Another significant factor that improves women's position in the home and community is their capacity to organize and generate an effective response to the economic crisis. By managing an enterprise, they obtain the necessary skills to produce a product, administer funds, organize the operation of the enterprise, and make decisions. These activities link them to the market, to certain state entities, and in general, to diverse sectors of the public from which women were previously isolated. They become the basis for the broader representation of women in the community.

the challenges and the outlook

Perhaps the most significant question to ask is whether activities such as PUs which focus on the individual and intra-group level are worthwhile? We believe strongly that transformation at the grassroots level tends to replicate itself and, thus, the answer has to be yes. However, we know that grassroots work is not enough. The impact of our work has to reach a broader level in order to effectively challenge existing inequalities and support the development of alternatives that benefit all women. That is why it is important for the women within PUs to also influence public policy; to "wage war".

How and from what perspective can women working in the PUs do this?

Even though we do not have all the answers to this question, it is important to analyze PU activity as we have done in this paper as a starting point for greater analysis and more meaningful plans. Other issues remain to be studied such as women's blocked access to credit, the role of women in development, etc. These issues, like the ones we have begun to discuss here, hold ideas and answers for the empowerment of low income urban women in the future.