Our Associate Elisa Spampinato reflects on her time with the Madhya Pradesh Tourism Board, an organisation which has twice been nominated for our Gender Equality Champion of the Year Award. Their gender-responsive initiatives set an inspiring example of how to make the industry a fairer, safer space for women.
When I officially assumed my role as a community storyteller in 2019, I made a promise to my professional self: to focus my effort on bringing real examples from the grassroots level and becoming that bridge between the invisible communities and the bigger stage.
Real stories from the field. Real successful examples of local Sustainable Development through tourism are what I believe we need to be confronted with, to realise that active community participation is all you need to achieve positive impact.
After having spoken of the burning issues of cultural authenticity for Resonate recently, I am now ready to share more grassroots stories about another hot topic in our industry, women empowerment.
I am glad to have the Equality in Tourism platform where I can show more examples of real people who I have met in the field and who are the embodiment of women empowerment, this time in Madhya Pradesh, India.
Madhya Pradesh Tourism Board’s Responsible Tourism Mission
Women empowerment can reveal itself in small details and sometimes it becomes evident even in a simple smile, as I discovered in Rwanda in 2022.
However, from an organisational perspective, for the change to be effective and long lasting, it needs to be embedded in every action.
Madhya Pradesh Tourism Board (MPTB), in their examples, have reiterated what my experience has proven: that the only way to achieve that is to make it part of the structure. Women Empowerment is, in fact, one of the seven Core Values of the government’s Responsible Tourism Mission (RTM), which aims to ‘make community-friendly destinations through community development programmes’.
Mr Manoj K Singh – Director of Skill at MPTB – with whom I directly worked for my Community Storytelling Workshop programme in March this year, shocked me during one of our first virtual meetings. He mentioned that there was a sine qua non condition for my workshop to happen: that at least 60% of the participants must be women. I felt at home and excited to begin the fieldwork.
Artists, Farmers and Homestay Owners
Women empowerment needs a cultural shift in the woman’s own community, which often means starting at the micro level of the family unit.
I believe that MPTB has understood something critical in this sense. In the RT Mission, homestay owners are predominantly women. Although men often conduct the registration and the admin parts, being the figure traditionally responsible for providing for the household, the houses are often named after their daughters and wives, who are the actual owners, such as in the case of Uma Pathak who owns Mahua Hill View in Orchha.
This subversive act challenges the supreme male authority within the house and creates a dent in the solidity of traditions. Thanks to governmental initiatives like this, women have gradually risen to have an equal status to their husbands even if it is only because they are now bringing in a regular income. Their position in the house has changed.
I met many of these women as participants in my workshop and something struck me powerfully. Becoming homestay owners and entrepreneurs hadn’t affected their self-awareness, instead it had enhanced their own identity. Now they are even more proud in stating who they are and what they love doing.
“I’m a farmer and a homestay owner,” said Uma to the camera, in the initial round of presentations during the first day of the workshop in Orchha. When I interviewed her last week and asked her to clarify why she introduced herself in that way, she responded that farming was what she has done since childhood. Her memories are full of millet, pulses, vegetables and wheat, planting seeds and collecting crops from the family land.
Becoming a successful businesswoman at Hill View Mahua, constantly receiving national and international guests, didn’t change who she is, but it gave her more power to express her personality. For the record, she is still a fantastic farmer who cooks the organic crops from her farm in a variety of fragrant dishes which I had the chance to taste while enjoying the view from the rattan swing on the veranda of ‘Hill View’, one of her two homestay accommodations.
The strong sisterhood that exists between Rekha Kushwaha and Kamla Kushwaha, as sisters-in-law, was sealed with the twin homestays built next to their own homes. I visited them many times and on one occasion I wanted to take a photo of them in front of the guests’ rooms, but I struggled to get them to stand on different steps. They wanted to stand next to each other because for them it seemed unnatural that one would be in a higher position than the other. I ended up taking a series of mirror pictures.
In Khari village, near Bhopal, a young owner walked me into one of the rooms of her lovely homestay after the blessing of the ceremonial welcome.
It was a bit surprising that one of the very first things she showed me, in that finely curated and warm environment, was the pretty peacock she had painted and decorated with real feathers collected in the forest, and proudly displayed against the white wall of the cosy room. “I am an artist and a homestay owner”, she seemed to tell me with her gesture.
Empowering Through Art (The Creation)
Women empowerment can assume different forms and one of these is the act of creation through art. Having the opportunity to express your emotions and your skills and share the results with others is a fulfilling experience.
I know that this is how both Sangeeta Bhorwanshi and Diksha Gour felt about their art, although this might not be the same for the other women involved in the arts and crafts activities that are run for tourism purposes.
At the Orchha workshop some local artisans were also present, whose work is supported by the local NGO Haritika, which supports MPTB’s work as a PSO (Project Support Organisation). The pride in sharing their work with me was visible but they became a bit shy when I asked them to be photographed with their creations. Perhaps it’s an uncommon situation to stand in front of a foreigner’s camera. I also wondered if taking credit for their creative work is not something that those women might have been accustomed to.
However, the pictures I took of them show that an increased self-worth and sense of accomplishment was achieved simply by holding that piece of modelled clay in their hand, and by making a visible connection between the creation and its artist.
There are two Art & Craft centres already established as part of the Responsible Souvenir Project – one of the six projects of the RT Mission – and nine of the Responsible Souvenir centres of the twenty proposed are in the pipeline. The centres provide training, help with product development, and sales and marketing support to the local artisans, the majority of whom are women.
So far, 172 artisans have been trained and 56 types of products have been developed. Women are at the forefront of the project, and I’ve met a few of them with their huge passion and high level of energy investment.
Other women are determined to turn their traditional art into a profession, building their skills with the support of the RT Mission. I met a group of three related in-law women in Sabarwani village who have recently started their journey as artists and entrepreneurs. While I was there, one of them started working on the pottery wheel under the attentive gaze of the other two ladies, almost without saying a word and completely focused on the activity, the steps of which she was still becoming familiar with. She had just completed the training, but her fingers were moving firmly on the very malleable dough.
The pottery workshop is one of the community activities they offer to local visitors, who want to explore their manual skills with the wet clay and take home their own creations.
‘Little Giants’ – A Safe Destination for Women
A group of young girls in blue tracksuits were waiting for me with the other participants at the entrance of the Orchha workshop venue on the 22nd March.
I wasn’t expecting a young audience, but I was happy to see so many smiling and excited faces welcoming me that morning.
I soon learned that they were some of more than 17,000 girls who, since 2021, have been trained in self-defence as part of the ‘Safe Tourism Destination for Women’ project run by MPTB.
These strong girls, ‘little giants’, brought fresh energy – and many chats – to our training space, including their creative skills which they were not shy to share.
They inundated the room – and my bags – with many funny drawings of me conducting the workshop, but also tigers and natural scenes that reflected the discussion we were having about the local community richness and resources. Their drawings also uncovered their dreams for the future of their country. ‘Green’ and ‘clean’ were very common words. One of them even felt inspired to compose a whole original story for us, which I brought back and store with great care at home.
The ‘Safe Tourism Destination for Women’ project of the RT Mission has different branches and initiatives that are tailored, but not only to female tourists as the title might suggest.
With this project, MPTB is implementing a series of actions that are changing the way police forces operate, and overall how Indian society perceives women but, above all, how women perceive themselves. It perfectly embodies the principles of Responsible Tourism, ‘making better places for people to live and better places for people to visit’ that were originally contained in the Cape Town Declaration of 2002, and adopted as the mission of the RTM itself.
The objective is to make the state of Madhya Pradesh a safe destination for travellers to visit but, first and foremost, also for the local women to live in. There are different ways to address the violence against women, such as condemning and punishing misbehaviour and adapting the current infrastructure so that this type of crime cannot easily happen.For example, by extending the lighting in pedestrian areas in dark spots of cities.
Another way to address the serious problem of safety and crime prevention, according to MPTB, is to make the local police forces more available and ready to intervene and communicate in English, and to provide education to both female and male citizens and self-confidence training and mentorship for women and girls.
The self-defence programme is part of this national intervention, of which I personally witnessed the benefits as a tourist and tourism professional.
Among the girls at the workshop was their martial arts instructor. Despite her young age (20 years old) every time she asked to share a thought or feedback on the subject we were discussing, her words and the way she delivered them expressed maturity. She was confident in her opinions and not at all shy, or arrogant, to share them. Just grounded, I would say, and a feeling that I also felt was supported by her posture.
The other girls spent a long time drawing and at one point I thought that during the long hours their attention might have drifted away. However, the comments they wanted to share at the end of that day’s session proved that they were following every part of the workshop and group activities, even though at the same time they were drawing creative shapes and making the tables more colourful and artistic.
Their comments were very well received and at times enlightening for the adult in the room.
Closing the Circle With Some Food for Thought
I am sure there are different ways to support women empowerment from a government perspective. But I believe the examples offered by MTPB provide interesting food for thought on how to approach the issue in a more systemic way.
First of all, women empowerment in tourism is strictly related to what is happening in the overall society. We cannot dream of making our sector more inclusive if the society in which we operate doesn’t perceive the lack of equality as an issue.
Secondly, women empowerment in tourism must strengthen one’s own identity, not covering it up or hiding it behind a prestigious role. Only by providing space to express who they feel they are, women can empower themselves.
Last, but not least, the safety of a woman starts in the belief that she is strong and capable of standing her ground, both physically and mentally. Self-awareness and self-confidence are key aspects of the cultural transition, as MPTB is proving very well.
Words and photos by Elisa Spampinato. Read another of her stories from the field highlighting the empowerment of women through tourism in Women on the Trail: Two Porters’ Journey to Kilimanjaro.
