Going back in time: small enterprise development project for rural women, Moneragala
] photo by PANAP The article by Buddhima Padmasiri -Structural Adjustment of Women’s Labour in Agriculture in Sri Lanka in Polity, January 17, 2023 unearthed some very early memories. Buddhima uses a case study from the Moneragala District to illustrate the exploitation and commodification of women’s labour in agriculture. I was working for the Lanka Mahila Samiti in the early 1980s as a Project Coordinator for their Small Enterprise Development Programme for Rural Women (SEDP) funded by USAID, and was charged with developing revolving fund schemes in all of the districts in which we were working, and encouraging the women members of the Samiti to use the funds to engage in income generating projects. With hindsight, I can see the many, many shortcomings of that project, but it was my first ever ‘development’ job and I was terribly keen and learning by doing (reading, attending conferences, talking to people etc). To our credit we were not into promoting enterprises that ster