Basic Income Sri Lanka (BISL) has initiated a pilot study to explore the effects of basic income on vulnerable women who are single parents and mostly widows.
Participants of this study are the members of two Women’s Rural Development Societies in Karachchi Division in Killinochchi. Three women have been randomly selected to receive awards of Unconditional Basic Income for a period of two years to study the impact of these awards on them and their children.
An award ceremony is to be held for the selected women on July 18th at the OPA auditorium at 4.30 p.m. Key note speaker at this event will be Dr. Sarath Davala, the coordinator for India Network for Basic Income (INBI) who will elaborate on the Indian experience in Basic Income, especially its impact on women and children. He will speak on the ‘Emancipatory power of basic income. The Indian Pilot Study and debate.’
Need for Basic Income in the lives of widows
Caring for children, elderly and the sick are being done by the women of this country on a daily basis but very little of it is paid or acknowledged as work.
The raising of children as well as managing a home is completely unseen by our society as work. But this is ‘work for life’- work that makes life happen in our society and it is totally unpaid work.
A case for Basic Income for women is actually a case for Basic Income to ‘work for life’.
This case is particularly applicable to female headed households which have become numerous in post war Sri Lanka. Statistics on the numbers, locations and the definition of female headed households are debatable. But it is clear that the numbers are disproportionately high and the vulnerability of widows and abandoned females who have to care for young children is overwhelmingly challenging.
Although there have been several attempts made by the state and local governments, NGOs and other private individuals to meet these challenges over a period of time, the low economic status and financial insecurities of the women persist. Projects in livelihood opportunities appear to be the panacea for a short time but soon disappear into nothingness. The women are back to zero and start from scratch once again.
If factories are set up for employment generation they are also of little use for these women because they are care givers and ‘working for life’ is constant work round the clock. There is literally no time to do an additional job unless there are additional hands to help out with household chores.
In this context, imagine a caring state or an institution giving each of the family a regular unconditional payment to cover basic needs and if the woman knows that her food and shelter are guaranteed; Now she can choose to work out of the home, based on her ability to manage the needs of her family, home and her job.
Imagine, if a woman wants to stay home to raise her children, she has the means to do so because society honours the work of the home?
Imagine if a young mother is presented with an option to go into prostitution to feed her children she can now be empowered to turn that request down.
Creating a world where Basic Income is the accepted paradigm would go a lot further towards liberating women from the economic constraints that child rearing and widowhood has come to bear upon them. Universal basic income for the widows only makes sense. It would change the gender debate to give women a clear advantage in the race for equality.