Sometimes a Sewing Machine Is Not the Answer

By Martha Thompson
Originally published in Rights Now Spring/Summer 2010

An Acehnese woman is looking out at the farming fields from one of the ubiquitous multifamily wooden shelters swiftly built for the thousands of displaced in Aceh, Indonesia, after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. She has lived in this shelter with her children since then. When the tsunami hit, it swept away her home, but at a deeper level, it swept away her identity. In one day she became what is known in international aid language as an "EVI," an extremely vulnerable individual — in this case, a widow with very young children.

Like many other young widows, she received training in tailoring and got a sewing machine so she could sew and try to earn money to supplement the aid for her children. With the money she earns, she can buy books and uniforms for her children and extra food and medicine to augment what she receives in the shelter.

To a relief worker, this situation is a no-brainer. As an EVI and a widow, this woman needs to earn money, so she becomes part of an income-generation project. Through that, she learns to sew; with a donated machine, she can make money to supplement what she receives as a displaced person.

It is a no-brainer but not in the usual sense of the word. Relief organizations have not fully grasped the reality that this woman and so many women in Aceh, Sri Lanka, and India face. The response has almost become automatic: "She's a widow; she must need a small business; here is a sewing machine." Except that she cannot earn enough to live — there are thousands of widows with sewing machines in Aceh. While she earns some needed income, that sewing machine is not a step up out of the shelter and into a sustainable livelihood.

When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Everyone recognizes that widows are vulnerable after disaster and need income and assistance; that's the "nail." Income-generation activities have become the hammer that relief organizations use for this nail. When organizations see people as vulnerable, they often begin with their needs rather than their rights.

The reality is that this woman, and thousands of women like her in Aceh, is a farmer who owned and tended land with her deceased husband. Under Acehnese law, she has a right to inherit her husband's land and farm for a living. She doesn't need a sewing machine to rebuild her life; she needs to get her land back. While her husbands' relatives are farming the land now, she has a legal right to inherit part of that land and farm it, which would enable her to go back to the village, find a house, and take up life again — not as an EVI or a displaced person but as a community member.

Luckily for this woman, a vibrant young leader named Wanti Maulidar became impatient seeing so many women farmers stuck in displaced shelters being trained in small businesses while other people farmed the land to which those women had a right. Maulidar was convinced that aid agencies never thought to ask women if they were farmers simply because they were women. With funding from UUSC, Maulidar began Bungeong Jeumpa, an organization to help women reclaim their land and return to their communities. She enlisted the help of Muslim imams to convince village leaders to grant women their land rights in community meetings. She also set up a clinic where women could get paralegal aid and started a radio program about women's rights to their land. Thanks to combined efforts, that Acehnese woman is no longer looking out the window at the fields, she's cultivating them.

Martha Thompson is the manager of UUSC's Rights in Humanitarian Crises Program.