Desarrollo de la inteligencia

Women declared that the networking strategy and group work of Tamil women had facilitated to initiate peace within society and with the other societies. They also said that the peace work of women indeed benefited women themselves for their individual development, such as getting exposure to other cultures and languages, receiving employment and leadership opportunities due to their networking and collaboration. On the other hand, these women declared they faced

challenges as well. Lack of financial support, dependency status caused by financial inefficiency, managing time and space between peace work and domestic responsibilities, were said to have been the main challenges the woman peacebuilders of Jaffna battled with.

Peace women of Jaffna articulated that they often travelled outside the district in order to meet women from the south of Sri Lanka with the aim of exchanging their experiences of brutal war. This kind of exchange through travelling, they said, had been a good way for women to get exposure to the outside world, especially to women from the grassroots level. These women described that this exposure of travelling around and meeting people from other ethnic groups that genuinely made women’s belief in peace stronger, given them a sense of confidence to achieve their goal and helped them to eradicate the submissive feelings that their culture enforced.

I am so lucky that I got a chance to travel around Sri Lanka, which would have never happened if I’d stayed at home. I understood the power of communication. If we had communicated before, this war would have never occurred. On a personal level, it was a good experience for me (Interview 29, April 10, 2005).

Women therefore said that the peace groups that women were engaged in gave women better opportunities to take leadership positions. In a woman's group, as the interviews with these women show, it is easier for young women to be encouraged to take up responsibilities and leadership. These groups also gave women the opportunity to learn about and discuss topics that were unique to them, which was also stated in the interviews with women. The topics that were normally discussed were the topics on peace work, reconciliation and social management. As divulged by women, women’s organizations gave women a special opportunity to bond, network and build powerful relationships with other women. The president of the Tharaka Centre for Widows Activities divulged:

I was 19 when I lost my husband and was a traumatized widow for five years. Now I am leading an organization. Sometimes I get surprised about myself (Interview 28, April 4, 2005).

Another peace woman who was the president for sixty women’s groups of Jaffna region in the interview said:

I thought peace means no-war; I had no idea what was meant by reconciliation and what that so-called exchange program was. I learned about them gradually through training. Working for peace completes my life (Interview 29, April 10, 2005).

According to the field data of this study, most of the peace women of Jaffna have never worked before, thus they had never been exposed to the world outside the

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household. The local and national level peace-related programs however gave these women a different experience that also helped them to improve their language and communication skills. This development of communication skills helped women increase their level of self-confidence and self-esteem, and supported them in increasing their knowledge and skill in building peace both at national and local levels.

I did not know English before. Now I understand a little. I am learning English (Interview 28, April 4, 2005).

We attend training workshops in various districts: Colombo, Trincomalee and Batticaloa. There, we present our own experience to the audience (FGI 04, December 6, 2005).

The development of social networks in this connection appeared most beneficial for woman peacebuilders in Jaffna. Besides, a group provides a woman a comfortable social environment within which to explore new social relationship and to create a new life. Women, in this context used their mission of building peace as a platform of acquisition of skills that prospered not only for women’s personal lives, but also for the sustainable development in the society through peacebuilding.

Despite the successful work for peace women had done so far, women stated that their peace activism had also been challenged and limited. First of all, these women said they faced financial problems. In fact, they were in need of attracting financial assistance from various sources in order to establish and strengthen their organizations. Many women in the interviews and in the focus group interviews described how often they had to walk several miles and to wait for hours to meet the ministers and businessmen in order to receive financial help.

We spent many hours, days and months to raise funds for our work, but only few people have a helping attitude (FGI 04, December 6, 2005).

Though some of these organizations had somehow managed to get financial support from some of the international non-governmental organizations and missionaries abroad, these women said that they still had to look for a location to hold their meetings. These women in several occasions were refused a place to meet and plan out their activities. The president of Tharaka Centre for Widows’ activities pronounced her long struggle to get a permanent location for planning out and organizing their projects and activities.

When we were struggling for a place to conduct our meetings, I found a house which was half built. I went to the owner and asked him to rent us this place. But he asked me to buy it for 100,000 to 150,000 rupees. I went to the minister (the late) Maheshwaran and asked for help.

He immediately gave me 100,000 rupees and a Methodist foreign missionary who served in Jaffna gave me 50 thousand with which I was able to buy this property. But to transact the deed and for further renovation of the house we needed more money and the same missionary, after being abroad, sent us enough money. To preserve the labor wage, we, the members of this association, did everything that laborers were supposed to do—like stone breaking and fetching water, etc. We had somehow managed to complete this building. Now, this building is our office (Interview 28, April 4, 2005).

Secondly, the dependency stature of these women’s groups restricted their independent function for peace as well. As these women has revealed in the interviews, most of the women groups were affiliated with the NGOs mainly for financial support. On the one hand, this affiliation provided women new chances to engage in peace-related projects. On the other hand, there were instances where women wanted to function independently, but could not as their self-sufficiency was circumscribed by their financiers.

We have plenty of ideas in hand, but cannot initiate everything as we do not have enough funds. We always have to wait, believing someone would come forward to help us (Interview 28, April 4, 2005).

Thirdly, most of the women who were associated with women groups working for peace were widows and were from the grassroots level. Women disclosed that their marital status as widows and husbandless had been a barrier to influence the community and to convey the peace message to people. People on many occasions refused to welcome them or even to listen to them.

They asked me to improve my own life instead of wasting time on such activities. They refused to listen to me first of all. Things would have been different had I been a woman with a well- off life, having a husband and wealth around. (Interview 28, April 4, 2005).

However, these women said they worked hard. Despite having domestic responsibilities, women professed that they dared to spend extra time mingling and acquainting themselves with the community in order to work for peace.

I cannot ignore my domestic duties as well. I have to manage time between my children, my job and my work for peace. Most of my evenings are spent on working for peace. Whenever I travel outside for reconciliation programs, my mother takes care of my children (FGI 04, December 6, 2005).

Finally, these women also said their engagement in other women-related activities, like widows support programs, reduced their time to work for peace. Apart from the time they were to spend on performing their ‘traditional’ duties at home, these women also said they had to share their schedule with working on solving women-

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related problems in society as well. Peace work came amidst everything that sometimes reduced women’s schedule for peace work.

Peace is a national issue, but women in Jaffna go through many social issues which are also to be taken care of (FGI 04, December 6, 2005).