2.3 Training manuals

There are three training manuals designed for women's small businesses:

Kraus-Harper and Harper (1991) Getting Down to Business: a training manual for businesswomen. This is a useful trainer's manual of basic business skills, covering how to teach basic business records, business planning, financial management etc to 'enterprising women'. However, the authors make it very clear that this is not intended for the poorest women, but only for those who are literate and have at least primary education, and who are also appropriately motivated:

The participants must also have some ambition, and idea about how to improve or expand their businesses. They must have thought clearly about how they can get away from their home and the business responsibilities.

And it continues:

.. this will exclude large numbers of women, but many of them may already have demonstrated that they can do very well without formal business skills.

Our study in fact showed the opposite, that poor women do need basic business skills.

The other two manuals are directed specifically at the poor and the 'less motivated'.

The Commonwealth Secretariat's (1992) Entrepreneurial Skills for Young Women: a manual for trainers provides resource materials and suggests teaching methodologies to those involved in developing entrepreneurial skills among women. It covers achievement motivation and gender issues as well as basic business skills. This manual was used as the basis of the programme designed for the women who feature in the Indian case study (chapter 5).

ILO's (1996) Rural Women in Micro-Enterprise Development: a training manual and programme for extension workers is intended for development workers involved in micro-enterprise development for women in rural areas. It provides modules on training methodology, marketing management, financial management and conducting feasibility studies. Emphasis is on learning by doing through a combination of workshops and field work.

Other manuals, not intended specifically for women, but of some relevance to this study are:

Harper M (1995) Empowerment through Enterprise. This is a manual for trainers of NGO workers working with the poor in developing their micro-enterprises. It is targeted at the poorest and shows through examples of activities that women need to be given preference in support for micro-enterprise development because of the disadvantageous situation in which they usually operate.

Rao TV et al (1990) Designing Entrepreneurial Skills Development Programmes: Resource Book for Technical and Vocational Institutions, for the Commonwealth Secretariat. This manual typifies the approach to SME and TVET in that it fails to realise that men and women have different training needs.

In addition to the above, there are many manuals for gender training in a wide range of development contexts, which are not specific to micro-enterprise development. Nevertheless, the principles underlying their approach need to be incorporated into micro-enterprise training programmes for women (and men). Some of the better known manuals for training of development workers are: Parker (1993) Another Point of View; a manual on gender analysis training for grassroots workers, Williams (1995) The Oxfam Gender Training Manual, and Moser (1993) Gender Planning and Development: theory, practice and training. Cummings et al (1994) Gender Training: the source book is a useful reference book.