A variation in the extent of gains that TUP members have been able to achieve since joining the CFPR/TUP program is only natural. Learning from stories of cases where things did not go as planned can be very instructive to get a more comprehensive understanding of the complexities of circumstances, inter-relationships of constraints, unanticipated consequences, and programmatic gaps which can help us improve. Interestingly, the observable characteristics that the report expected to be strongly associated with ‘struggling’ cases, such as the age of the member, whether she had a husband or not, or certain types of enterprises, etc. were not important as characteristics that distinguished between the ‘struggling’ cases and those that were not. Of such variables, having adult male labour in the household, be it from the husband or other male members, is important—households, where the TUP member did not have any adult male labour support, were more likely to be ‘struggling’ than otherwise. The interesting variable in this respect was the ‘quality’ of the husband’s labour proxied by asking the TUP member whether her husband was hard-working (kormoth) or not. This variable essentially captures the husband’s willingness to work hard to improve the household’s situation and could also partially reflect the overall quality of the husband-wife relationship within the household. The report found that this variable is an important one in terms of differentiating between the ‘struggling’ and ‘non-struggling’ cases. It is interesting to note that of those who were ranked as ‘struggling’ and had husbands in the ranking exercises, 83% reported that their husbands were physically able to work—yet only 58% of them reported that their husbands were kormoth.
Authors: Matin, Imran; Noor, Marufia; Shihab, Abu M
Type: Report
Year: 2004
