Muthipetchi, panchayat member
My husband tried to stop me standing for election
A few years ago the women would never leave my village. Any work outside the village would be done by the men. That is changing now. SRED (a VST partner) came to my village and gave the women all sorts of training on gender and other issues. They told us that we could go anywhere and do anything we wanted. Since then I’ve gained a lot of confidence.
I am president of my self-help group and I was asked to stand to be a panchayat ward member. I was afraid at first because I didn’t know how I would manage it. SRED sent me to training sessions and gave me lots of encouragement, they told me that I could do it. When I was standing for election the men in my village went to my husband and made him put in a petition against me standing. We had such a fight about this and I told him I would leave him if he did not withdraw the petition. He withdrew, and I was elected the first women member of the panchayat.
It has made me very proud to be able to do something for my village. The village is now on a bus route, we’ve started a ration shop and a crèche and built a new road leading to the village cemetery.
Women and men are born equal, but men have made us inferior. Now we are growing the men find it hard to tolerate. But we are happy. The work is far from finished, men only still sit on the Katta Panchayat (unofficial village elders meetings), they must allow women to attend these meetings too.