New Skills, New Dreams
6 December 2006
Trained as house painters, women in an Oxfam program in Aceh are taking important steps toward security and equality.
Mahmulia's navy blue tee shirt is flecked with yellow, and her hair is speckled with brown paint. "This is my second day of painting," she says with a laugh.
Oxfam is training Mahmulia and 36 other women to paint the new homes being built in their village, Beuring In, which was destroyed by the tsunami.
Before the tsunami, house painting was a male-dominated occupation. Women's activities tended to center on working in the rice fields or running a street stall. The unprecedented scale of construction work in Beuring In means there's high demand for skilled painters, which has created paid job opportunities for local women.
"The women asked if they could paint and we said yes," Oxfam's Ainy Fauziyah explains. "In this area, they will paint 48 permanent houses built by Oxfam. Each group of two or three painters is paid 350,000 rupiah (US$35) by Oxfam."
Today, Mahmulia is painting a living room ceiling and some window and door frames as a practice run before the project starts for real. Working in small groups, the women will be expected to paint one home a week.
With so many new houses under construction, they are likely to have work for a long time to come. Once the Oxfam homes are completed, Ainy plans to recommend the women to other house-building agencies in the area.
For Oxfam, this project is about more than simply creating jobs. It is also about women becoming empowered to improve their lives and their community.
"I want to be equal and have the same way to make money as a man," Mahmulia says. "In the future I will marry and have a baby, and it's good to earn money so that the baby doesn't have to wait to get things from the man only."
Another trainee painter, Rusmiyati, sees her job as an opportunity to give her children a decent education. Her eldest son, who is 19, has missed the chance for higher education because there was not enough money for schooling. She does not want the same to happen to her younger offspring. "I hope they can go to university, have a good education, and earn good money."
Rusmiyati says she will earn more as a painter than working in the rice fields or selling fish. That is especially important for her, as her husband died shortly before the tsunami, and she is forced to raise her family alone.
Rusmiyati and Mahmulia have chosen to work together. Equipped with paints, rollers, ladders, and brushes supplied by Oxfam, they will paint one-storey permanent houses in Beuring In and the surrounding area.
"It is an exciting opportunity for the women. Before, I didn't know how to paint and now I do," says Mahmulia, again erupting into fits of laughter. "I am very happy to be doing it."
But every job has a downside. "My neck aches from painting the ceiling."
December 2006
