KARACHI: Rehana, 40, distinctly remembers the day she had moved to Yousuf Goth in Gadap from Lahore around 24 years back. “I walked into a house full of people whom I didn’t know,” she says while working on an adda [embroidery frame] that is used for embroidery in her one-room home. “There used to be an embroidery workshop inside our home with three more quarters. My husband’s five brothers worked alongside him and shared expenses. In order to blend in and be useful, I decided to learn embroidery along with my sister-in-law who knew it really well,” she says while adding silver threads to a collar neck design in front of her.

Six years back, the brothers decided to part ways. Two of her brothers-in-law own a tuck shop and sell beetle leaves, whereas their wives run beauty parlours at their home. Rehana is stuck with embroidery as it earns her “enough to run my home for a week,” whereas her husband, Amjad, is a shoemaker whose work is sold with a brand name.

Knowing how to embroider on bridal outfits, collar neck designs for men, using kora, zardozi and aari, she explains there are 50 collars on one adda. She earns Rs1,200 per week, she says, adding that this is far more than what she earned before. “I get work from a nearby workshop of Shahid Bhai who then sends the complete work to the market,” she shares with Dawn, while adding that she knows very little about the market her embroidered work ends up at, as she hardly ever steps out of her home.

With her two children, aged 16 and 14, standing nearby, she says: “The workshop owner pays me less if my children help me embroider. If I’m the sole person working on the adda, it gets me the full price.”

Rehana has had nine children, three of whom died just days after their birth, she says as a toddler comes up to her. Although she is open to sharing most of the information about her work, her children and life in general, it took her a while to speak about the physical abuse she undergoes on a daily basis. “He [Amjad] doesn’t let me go out and keeps calling me if I’m not around as he gets suspicious,” she adds.

“I enrolled my children in a school. I spent a good time and learned a craft without being educated. For me, I followed my mother’s advice and compromised. My children won’t be able to do that or sustain in this profession,” she adds.

A policy to recognise the rights of home-based workers was recently signed by the Sindh chief minister. As the policy document awaits further approval, Zehra Khan of the Home-Based Women Workers Federation (HBWWF) plans to amend the definition of employer, worker and establishment (where the handiwork is done).

“The national policy on home-based workers will take a while to properly become an act. Then there is the part about ensuring its efficacy. But in the meantime, we are working on adding a few things which will help further push the cause of workers in general and women workers in particular,” says Zehra.

There are 12 million home-based workers, 80 per cent of whom are women, in the country, she adds.

A lane ahead, Yasmeen Ramzan, 30, has helped her entire family learn embroidery. Living in a home shared by five families, Yasmeen, who hails from Punjab, started going to a neighbour’s home to learn embroidery some time back. “Most of the women you’d fine here belong to Punjab. They moved here because of their husbands or the fact that they were not able to earn enough,” she says, while sitting in one of the two rooms in her home. Working on an adda with her niece, she says she studied till Class V and was then taken out because her parents wanted her to learn a craft.

Unlike Rehana, Yasmeen knows where her work goes and how much it should earn her at the end of the day. “The work I produce goes to Lalukhet, Tariq Road and Jama Cloth. Irrespective of what the agent tells me, I know I’m earning less than men in the nearby workshop. They get Rs800 for an embroidery patch for which I get paid Rs500,” she adds.

At a workshop, a few steps from Rehana’s home, Mohammad Kashif, 40, speaks about the overall loss faced by home-based workers. “The rates are continuously getting less. Some people prefer machine work and that’s why most workers convert to those and move to the main city. The real sheen on an embroidered dress comes from needle work that we do here, but we all are easily replaceable,” he adds.

Published in Dawn, December 26th, 2016