There was shocked silence at the announcement at a meeting of a newly-formed fishing workers' union in India's Tamil Nadu state's Nagapattinam district, which was worst affected by last December's tsunami.
The communique said that the union's elected president was a man, and the post of secretary was open to women.
Seven women finally gathered courage to contest for the position. A female trade union leader is unheard of in this fishing community, where women are ironically not allowed to go out to sea to fish.
ILLUSTRATION: YUSHA
Most do not even know how to swim as they are traditionally barred from entering the sea -- probably one of the main reasons why more women than men died when the tsunami crashed into southeastern coastal districts of Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
According to the UK-based humanitarian organization Oxfam, in Nagapattinam alone 2,406 women died compared to 1,883 men. In Cuddalore district, almost three times as many women died as men -- 391 to 146. India's overall tsunami toll crossed 16,000.
"Women are the face of poverty. They are the hardest hit in any disaster," said Sunitha, gender advisor with Oxfam. "We need to strengthen their abilities to better equip them to meet future disasters -- whether it's a collapse of the market, a natural disaster, an accident, anything."
Soon after the tsunami, relief workers said that age-old customs and prejudices ended up leaving women out of the loop in the distribution of relief.
"The first cash dole in Tamil Nadu was given to heads of households -- all men. Single women or households where the husband or adult sons had died received no money at all," said Revathi Radha-krishnan, a correspondent for Web site indiadisasters.org, which has a "Tsunami Response Watch" section that pools information on tsunami response efforts in India.
The first round of cash relief was distributed on the basis of the ubiquitous ration card, the primary means of proving identity and residence in India. Most ration cards are issued in the name of the male head of a family.
In most villages, the panchayats or village councils and the powerful fishing societies are dominated by men. They are the ones who make most decisions relating to relief and rehabilitation measures.
In one Tamil Nadu village, 12 widows who used to trade fish were told they were not entitled to compensation as they were not members of the male-only fishing society, said a report on indiatogether.com, a Web site specializing in development issues.
There was an attempt at correction as further rounds of funds were given by the state to women and bank accounts opened for them.
But this too led to problems with relatives of several widowed and single women, almost all of them illiterate, managing their funds.
"Many of them know they have been given compensation. They have been told they have 100,000 rupees [US$2,300] in the bank. But they have no idea where it is or how they could access it," Radhakrishnan said.
With their fishing boats destroyed and little work, the men splurged their compensation money on alcohol, according to women survivors at the government's temporary shelters.
Alcoholism is, in fact, a rampant problem among men in the shelters, aid workers admit. Alcohol intake among men had actually tripled, said P. Manorama, a doctor who worked with the tsunami-affected in Cuddalore, The Week magazine reported.
According to a report by Sneha, a non-profit group working in Tamil Nadu, 40 percent of households in the tsunami-affected areas were supported by women. The women would help clean the daily catch and sell them to vendors. Some ran shops or worked as agricultural labor.
With their livelihoods washed away and family and community support structures disrupted, the women are especially vulnerable.
The living conditions at the shelters makes the situation worse. There are tales of harassment at the shelters where families -- sometimes of eight or more -- live in single rooms divided by thin metal walls. The community toilets are some distance from the rooms and women usually visit them in pairs at night. Their woes were compounded with the summer heat and now the monsoon rains.
"The conditions at these shelters is pathetic to say the least," Radhakrishnan said.
Voluntary groups are trying to involve the women in community activities and through self-help groups. At several shelters widows have been given the task of looking after orphaned children.
Self-help groups are visiting shelters to encourage women to attend basket-weaving, sewing and candle-making classes to provide alternative livelihoods till the boats are out at sea in full strength again.
However, relief workers said that when the activities were too far removed from the traditional fish-related trade the women were used to, the response was not very enthusiastic.
The Gandeepam Global Foundation, which runs 50 shelters, plans to launch income-generating schemes linked to processing and packaging fish.
"We hope involving the community will bring about much needed changes to the status of women and life at the camps," V. Ramani of the foundation said.
Humanitarian groups were trying to ensure that women at the shelters are involved in planning, distribution of food, shelter, public health and livelihood issues.
They are being involved in identifying and voicing their needs, another first in these conservative communities were women were never heard before.
The camps are there to stay -- for at least another six months. The progress in rehabilitation has been slow as various issues relating to the permanent shelters -- the location and land rights -- are worked out. After strong lobbying by humanitarian organizations, the governments of Tamil Nadu and Kerala have decided the permanent shelters are to be jointly owned by men and women.
In Karakkal in Kerala, Oxfam has ensured that a cash-for-work program pays equal wages to men and women. Women are traditionally paid half the wages given to men.
Aid workers hope small steps like these will have a long-term impact on the position of women in the deeply conservative society of fishing communities in the coastal districts of southern India.
"The entire value system has to be changed," Sunitha said. "People have to accept that women are entitled to equal wages, that they deserve to own a house along with the man, that they too can be at the forefront in decisionmaking on issues of food security and so on."
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