CLAIMING A WOMAN'S REAL PLACE... BEHIND THE KEYBOARD TOO!
By Frederick Noronha

FROM KITCHENS to the keyboards. That's the transition that women in the home are finding it possible to make, thanks to the help they're getting from the new world of information and communication technologies (ICTs). ICTs are giving a leg-up to hard-pressed women home-based workers, as an interesting experiment from Malaysia shows.

"We're working to show women how it's possible to do income-generating work from their home (using computers and modern technology). We're telling them that if they have two hands are are able-bodied, they can bring in incomes for themselves and their families," says Ms. Chong Sheau Ching, founder of the Mothers For Mothers network.

Called Mom4Mom (www.mom4mom.com) for short, this experiment believes that one of the most important lesson for women is the "value of self-reliance". By showing home-makers and women working from home that it's possible to generate a cash income for their families, this makes a huge difference to their psyche.

Work that can be generated ranges from making and selling cookies (using the Net to finding markets), to editing work, accounting, and taking care of somebody's children. Work generated can be freelance, piece-work or running home-based businesses.

'CAPITAL'... AT HOME

"If women have their home furniture and a telephone, that's their own capital to start with. Their children, who can help out, are another major resource," says she. The strategy is also to build "alliances" between, say able-bodied persons who can market home-made goods and the disabled, who produce them from their homes. Or between the literate and the illiterate.

"Lot of women are in low-paid jobs. So they may end up having to take second jobs. People who need this the most are disabled women, single moms, those chronically ill with say cancer in remission or kidney patients," says this determined and articulate woman.

It was started in 1998, even as the economic crisis was hitting East Asian countries like Malaysia. Women were being thrown out of jobs, or their husbands were losing their salaries, turning the heat onto them either way.

"Today there are very interesting and viable options for women. We have volunteers all over Malaysia, but mostly in (the national capital) Kuala Lumpur," says Chong Sheau Ching, a former World Health Organisation information planner who came back home.

She points out that women have worked "for centuries" from home. But, of course, they've seldom been paid for it. Women have also been good at earning incomes from home. So, a cyber-platform could increase their reach.

"Teleworking is still very new in Malaysia. We hope to convince companies, and will be demonstrating a home-based tele-office ourselves. We are against women going into multi-level marketing operations, which can end up in them getting conned. We want to encourage women to work from their own skills," says she.

Of course there are many different types of women, each coming in with their own attitudes and aspirations. For instance, the 'mother gorilla' is eager to know how she can earn money when her priority is her family. Another type, the 'hungry wolf' dreams of getting rich as soon as possible -- of course, this remains only a dream. On the other hand, the 'tired guard dog' wants an answer for how much she can earn in just three hours of time she has to spare between rushing around taking care of her family.

It's the 'rabbit sleeping under the tree' who asks how much time she would need to work for. The 'scared turtle' simply lacks in self-confidence and has a 'help-me' sign writ large on her forehead. 'Running deer' is trying out too many different options, often ending up running helter-skelter, without really achieving much. But it's the 'cunning fox' that is trying to take advantage by giving-less and taking-more from a work partner.

BIG DIFFERENCE

But leveraging the wonders of ICTs, or information and communication technologies, does make a big difference. For almost anyone.

"Because of IT, we can work from home and achieve a lot of things. From proposals to invoices, we can send these across as an attachment, without even meeting clients," says she. Once competently used, IT helps generate the "kind of enthusiasm that money cannot buy".

The Malaysian government's pro-IT policy really helps play a big part in taking the campaign forward. For instance, there are songs tele-cast, promoting the needs of harnessing IT. "Everybody seems to know the word IT here," she says.

Going back in time, rewind to 1999, when mom4mom.com launched its website.

"At the beginning, we were just laughed at, because people thought homemakers couldn't go into IT. They thought IT was just for companies. Or that IT is for men and the young," adds Chong Sheau Ching.

She adds that during the dot-com boom this venture felt very "left out". There were reasons for this. "We tried to get (IT) volunteers to help us, but they were paid so high that nobody wanted to help out. Not even women," she adds. So, they simply did it themselves. After making many mistakes, it managed to find their way through.

"We found we were actually doing the right thing". Because, after the dotcom bust, it became clear that money has to be spent very, very carefully. Mom4mom, for instance, spent no money on advertising. It built its growth-strategy on a word-of-mouth promotion by those who had benefitted.

Women have additional handicaps. It takes time for them to learn keyboarding skills. Often, at home, the husband and children get the 'right' to access the keyboard before women. In this rain-swept country, many modems got struck by lightening. Windows-virii attacks set the work of many back.

Often women find they can't locate the information they need on the Net. "There was no suitable portal for us. Much of the 'women' sites deal with fashion and cosmetics or movie stars. We want to know what kind of options are available to provide economic self-reliance," says Chong Sheau Ching.

There are other problems too. Often, connections to the Net gets "disconnected all the time", and in the meanwhile, they have to go off and take care of their children.

Efforts are on to change the situation, in how so ever small a way.

MY FAIR LADY

Under the My Fair Lady Project, disadvantaged women will be trained and helped to try and get tele-commuting jobs. Recently, the Mom4Mom came out with their book for home-workers. For this book, they themselves did research via e-mail, and working concentratedly for two years.

One of the goals of Mom4Mom is to teach women simple networking skills. "Using the Net you can reach out to many others. Often, you don't even have to spend money for an advert in the papers," says Chang Sheau Ching. "Once people learn this is something they can use, and that there are models to follow, they can help themselves."

"What is very important is that women might be very poor, but they can use ICTs as a means. Lot of policy makers use it as an ends, and set up fancy portals, costing millions of dollars, which have little use for the average woman in the street," Ching told this correspondent during a recent conference on ICT for development, organised in Kuala Lumpur by the UNDP/ Asia Pacific Development Information Programme.

Home-based IT-dependent work by women is basically of two kinds. Some provided goods from home -- like hand-painted tee-shirts or cookies -- even a couple of years before e-commerce became a buzz word. Others offered services -- consultancy, translation, and those from writers or editors.

Women producing goods have a harder time. It's not just a question of finding buyers, but the product too should reach safely. "E-commerce is not just about putting up goods on a website. It has to reach the buyer in good shape, be of good quality, and get across in time," notes Ching.

"Being able to market services is still a big problem. It's difficult to convince a company that a woman's work is better than that done by another company's. They don't believe it just due to the prejudice. But if that same woman's work is re-sold through another company, it is seen as high quality work," she smiles.

"Our message is that it's right for women to make their own choice. Most of the time, it's their father or husband who decides. Fathers and husbands are more skeptical than the women themselves that they can work out of home," she adds.

CONTENT, CLOSE TO A WOMAN'S HEART

Why should ICTs and IT discriminate against women, she asks. "ICT is seen as very hardware based. But we don't talk about the content involved. Content is language, and women have been good at this for generations," says she.

On first getting noticed publicly, people asked them whom they were. "If we said home-makers, they thought it was funny, and called us housewives. Actually our core group is made up of professionals working out of home," says Chong Sheau Ching. She told this writer that the website currently has some 2000 members, while the core-group is made up of 25.

It's not just hardware and software that's important in such work. "In an ICT project (using new information and communication technologies) what is important is convincing women to build up on their own inner resources, and motivating people," says Ms Ching.

Over the years, the demand has grown. With its volunteer base, it could not meet the demand for assistance. Ching concludes: "Hardware or software alone do not solve women's problems, unless their confidence levels are changed."

ENDS