Episode 8

Interviewer: Travel creates stories, unforgettable stories that can make us smile, laugh or even cry. I'm David [Coldron], and you're listening to Out of Office, powered by Contiki. It's the final episode of the season and in this special Real Talk episode, we're talking about India's female Revolution. India has one of the fastest growing economies on the planet but despite this, it's still one of the most difficult places in the world to be a woman, with lack of gender equality and female education being some of the biggest challenges women face. Today, we're talking female empowerment. How women are fighting gender stereotypes in India, a country dominated by men and patriarchy. Contiki sent Canadian travel blogger, Nadine Sykora on a mission to India to find and meet some incredible women who are spearheading movements for change. Hi Nadine, how are you?

Respondent 1: I'm doing good, thank you for having me.

Interviewer: Awesome.  So I know you're a big fan of solo travel, and solo travellers can be empowering to women. Tell us a little bit more about that, why do you love solo travel so much?

Respondent 1: I love solo travel because it's exactly what you said, it's empowering. There is nobody else but yourself to rely on and it's a type of travel that really just teaches you so many life skills on how to defend, how to survive, how to thrive by yourself. And not only that, it’s that you get to do anything that you want to do. Where in life do you get to choose everything? Where you want to eat, or what you want to do, what you want to see, it's just so ... it  is, it's an empowering type of travel and it's very, very exciting.

Interviewer: Do you think there's any other special effects but solo travel has specifically for women?

Respondent 1: I think it teaches women specifically that they can rely on themselves a lot more than they think they can. I think they would get told a lot in life that we can't do things. Especially as women, we told we can't do that, you can't do that, you can't go solo travel there, blah, blah, blah, and it kind of proves them wrong. It proves all the naysayers wrong. That you can actually do a lot of things when you set your mind to it and that kind of ... it's just such a big growth and learning experience, that's why I love it so much.

Interviewer: Now, you went on a trip with Contiki to India. What was the mission? What did you want to achieve when you're in India?

Respondent 1: So the mission I wanted to achieve was to see first-hand India's female Revolution. So it was to learn about the struggles and the challenges that women are facing in India. Then to see what kind of efforts are being made to change that, and to see how they're progressing.

Interviewer: That's awesome, so when you were in India, what surprised you the most when you were witnessing all this first-hand?

Respondent 1: I think the thing that surprised me the most was just seeing how much the women are the ones spearheading the change. The women are the ones that are out there, they're the superheroes and I expected men to be a bit more involved, but it really does take women to create the movement and create that snowball effect.

Respondent 1: Exactly, it's women leading women, women inspiring other women, women empowering other women.

Interviewer: That's awesome though. So when you were ... I've never been to India, and I've always wanted to go, what were your first impressions of the country itself?

Respondent 1: Oh my gosh. It was so much, it was like a rainbow of senses. There's just so many sights and smells and flavours and tastes, it's just everything you could possibly imagine, it's just so vivid and bright and colourful and there's so much out there to see and do, that's really exciting.

Interviewer: When you were in India you met several amazing women that are doing some amazing initiatives aiming at empowering other women, can you tell me about one of those initiatives?

Respondent 1: Mm-hmm, So one of the coolest initiatives I saw was the Pink City Rickshaw Company. So I was in Jaipur which is the largest city in Rajasthan in northern India.

Interviewer: OK, and we actually have online the director, Radhika Kumari, hello Radhika.

Respondent 2: Hi.

Interviewer: How are you today?

Respondent 2: I'm very well.

Interviewer: Awesome. Can you tell me a little bit about Pink City Rickshaw?

Respondent 2: Yes, so the Pink City Rickshaw Company is an initiative to provide livelihoods to the women who belong to the slums around Jaipur. Most of these women are from really low economic households, they all four generally below the poverty line. A lot of them are educated up to [eight] standard, so say the age of 12. But because Jaipur is a very traditional and very conservative place, women have not traditionally been encouraged to go out of the house and work. So India also has a very low ... the women are working in the labour force only 27 percent because traditionally they're encouraged to just work at home, not go out of the house, a lot of it is unpaid labour. And this is an initiative to provide an opportunity for them to earn a better likelihood. So here we trained these ladies how to drive a rickshaw, the rickshaws are electrically charged, they've been modified to look like a buggy and we've designed tours. Jaipur is also a very beautiful place with heritage properties, you've got lovely palaces, you've got beautiful museums. And so we've got tours which are around these places, so we have a heritage tour a lot of people come here to shop, so we have a shopping tour. These are all guided tours, we have an app for that. We not only train them to drive these rickshaws and take people on tools, but we also provide them with skills to empower themselves. Finally, we encourage them to buy shares into the company. So the company is going to be owned by the ladies, we've already got some of them on board.

Interviewer: That's awesome though, so essentially as the company grows and you educate more women into helping it, they benefit even more from it?

Respondent 2: Yes, it's a social enterprise. So I as the company grows they not only benefit from the company going, but they also learn how to manage and control the company. So it just is not just a project, but we wanted it to be self-sustainable.

Interviewer: That's awesome, because you're making them very savvy practically, but then you're also giving them this business education. So how did this idea come about for the Pink City Rickshaw Company?

Respondent 2: The main idea was that I realised a lot of people from rural areas are now shifting to urban areas. But the cost of living is extremely high. So you know the urban poverty is increasing at an alarming stage. To meet the challenges, both of the men as well as the ladies, both have to work, but we realised that to get the women to work, we not only have to work with them, but we also have to work with their families, try and change the stereotype. For example, when we started the project here there were no women who were driving in rituals. But the cities are full of rickshaws, full of tuk-tuks, full of taxis driven only by men. We had so many tourists coming and we felt it is a ladies who were not getting the opportunity. It was a pilot ... this is the pilot, [it’s the first city]. We hope to replicate it another tourist cities like Benares or [unintelligible 00:07:49] or Agra, where there are a lot of tourists coming in who would like to see the city in a slightly different manner.

Interviewer: So are you ... you  started touching a little bit about it, but the women that you employ, you mentioned that some of them are very much below the poverty line.

Respondent 2: Ninety percent of them are below the poverty line.

Interviewer: Ninety percent?

Respondent 2: The ladies who are with us, yes, most of these ladies. Another interesting fact is that women in India have not ever had any financial control. So they've not been working because they're not financially independent. They've not had the opportunity to make various decisions. For example, marriage or the age when they should be getting married, what sort of education they should follow, or what their children should be doing. And by giving them this opportunity we feel that they are better equipped to handle decisions later on in their lives.

Interviewer: Yes, so why is it important for women to have their own jobs and earn their own money?

Respondent 2: I think it's extremely important because once you contribute to the money in the family, you have a say in decisions. For example, whether you should be investing in a property or taking up a new job, or as I mentioned, even very basic things like when their daughters or when their children should be getting married, would have they should be accepting dowries, whether their children should be able to study further. Generally, we realise that it is the men who take all these decisions because traditionally, you know the division of labour, the division of work in India has been like that, where the men go out to work but the women will be staying at home and taking care of the family and cooking etc. etc.

Respondent 2: Absolutely.

Interviewer: All right, that is amazing though. Now Nadine, what did you think of the Pink City Rickshaw Company when you were there?

Respondent 1: I thought it was a beautiful initiative. I know just being a female travel on myself, it's so exciting to see female-run businesses and being able to support that with my tourist dollar. That to me is really exciting, and just having that comfort, like Radhika said, rickshaw drivers are male. So anytime you want to get around places you're always giving your money to male rickshaw drivers, that's where they're always taking you, and not only is it a feeling of women supporting women, which I love, it's also women financially supporting women and putting your money into their pockets as well. So it's kind of spreading it out. And it's a safety thing too, women ... I know this myself, you always just naturally feel more comfortable when you're around other women. That's just how it is. So to be able to drive around and see such a beautiful city in the safety of ... like in the presence of another woman is awesome. And also just seeing it from their  perspective, from their point of view and seeing what things they point out is different as well.

Interviewer: Right, so mentally noting when I go to India  I'm going on one of those Pink City Rickshaws. So where did you go next Nadine?

Respondent 1: So the next place I travel to was Ranthambore. So it is a vast wildlife reserve in the countryside of Rajasthan, where you can find tigers and bears and all other kinds of animals. So wild animals here means that there is actually a lot of poaching, and this is a form of illegal employment that has rifle division for many, many years. And Ranthambore is actually an eco-sensitive zone, meaning that there are no factories or industry and the women who live here actually have little opportunity for work. So the Dhonk Centre, aims to tackle that by retaining the wives of men who are ex-tiger poachers, as well as giving them an alternative form of employment to the people who were previously employed in illegal woodcutting, grazing and hunting.

Interviewer: OK, so we actually have on the line Divya Khandal, the founder of Dhonk Centre.  How are you Divya?

Respondent 3: I'm fine, David, how are you?

Interviewer: I'm doing well, I'm doing well. Can you tell me a little more about Dhonk Centre?

Respondent 3: We are basically a social enterprise working here since the last decade and the whole objective of our program is to give sustainable job opportunities to the tigers’ neighbours. Especially the ex-poachers, who were basically responsible for finishing off the tiger population in our  neighbouring [unintelligible 00:12:31] and bringing down our population of tigers to 18 in 2005. So we are the only ones who are going door-to-door to these houses and convincing the families to leave their old occupation behind and join the mainstream society with the help of these skilled training and alternative livelihood that we provide through Dhonk. So basically, what would you hear is we use craft as a medium and we train them in native crafts with the help of the local trainers who are working with us at Dhonk Centre.  And once the training is completed, the women mostly who are working with us, sometimes men, are then free to work  as much or as little as they want to and unrespectable wages and sell their produce to the local tourism market. So basically, this kind of a project is supported by responsible travellers and travel companies who understand the importance of their visit and the impact that it can make on the community.