Informal sector work, and the value of gendered tacit knowledge in contributing to economic empowerment is overlooked.

Women in conflict and fragile contexts, rely on uncoded tacit knowledge to generate solutions for their financial survival. These are often dismissed as tertiary work and their value to peacebuilding and community cohesion is overlooked by policymakers. These are especially useful in nations like Afghanistan, where employment for women is banned, yet the homebased economy is a viable option for sustainable income generation.

Co-designed and co-produced policies and programming for economic development lead to more impactful and long-term engagement. 

Co-written and programmed interventions from women are more inclusive and perceived as more meaningful by women. This project’s work I think indicates a better uptake, deeper engagement, and cascading of training occurs only when the programme is designed collaboratively and in a bespoke manner that does not use a ‘one size fits all’ approach.

Art based practices as a method are valuable for community level change in highly fragile contexts.

By focusing on personal experiences and shared cultural connections, craft-making can help facilitate challenging conversations about identity, peace, and conflict in accessible, equitable and open-minded ways that encourages collective sharing, listening and learning.

Creative practices face negative gendered biases.

Even in contexts where policymakers focus on women’s economic empowerment, there is still pushback against craft making and art-based practices. These creative industries are often framed as hobbies rather than a source of culture and livelihood. This is a general pattern where any (perceived) non-economic benefit facing labour is relegated as a hobby. The women craft makers are then excluded from engagement with that policy space because they are not seen as artists but as hobbyists.

Women rely on women in a feminist practice of making.

Often the women will gather in a house, drink tea, chat and make objects These are feminist practices where the relationship between the women, the landscape, each other, and the practice of making is the basis of their group community identity.

Intergenerational knowledge is highly valued as women pass on their skills and train others. 

Women in this research project value the intergenerational knowledge necessary for culturally rooted craft making. This knowledge, passed particularly along matrilineal lines, is central to both the cultural productions of material goods and the active and affective construction of identities within these conflict-affected contexts.

Safeguarding principles of care and ethics of research in conflict contexts is key to creating effective project.

Understanding the context in terms of fragility, both physical and socio-political, is a necessary part of embedding the project with participant buy in. Awareness of local issues such as inclement weather, access to public transport and other such nuances of the research site – allow for ethics of operating to be clearly defined with care as a key component. Seeing researchers as partners and not data collectors is most important.

Agility of research methodology and partnerships to respond to polycrises. 

Each of the project’s locations face multiple crises in addition to the global health pandemic of COVID-19. In Pakistan, widespread floods; in Sri Lanka economic and political crisis; in India the abolition of Article 370 removing Jammu and Kashmir’s semi-autonomy; and in Afghanistan the departure of NATO and the collapse of Kabul to the Taliban. Each event triggered key methodological recalibration and response that did not place additional burden on partners, and instead relied on collaborative leadership of research teams in-country. Here the principles of equitable research where partners provided leadership in their response is key.

Empathy networks across the regions provide encouragement through solidarity.

Very often, the most marginalised lack networks of support and access to information outside of their local/national context, and they occupy a disconnected isolated space both geographically and conceptually. This work connects women in fragile remote contexts to others across their nation and in the wider region. Recognition of challenges that were unique to them, yet present in varying forms in the lives of others, provides reassurance and better engagement across contexts. Peer learning evolves with horizontal linkages between women’s focus groups across South Asia.

Women face challenges such as marginalisation, minoritisation and exclusion through the prevalence of strong patriarchal structures.

Early marriage, limited access to finances, obedience in behaviour and action in accordance with male expectations, and constructs of community ethics and morals amongst other gendered behaviour patterns, which influence decision making and related agency, are noted across the research contexts. Intersectional micro identities including gender and religion, identity of age, geographic location, dress and culture, language spoken, marital status, reproductive health, all contribute to understanding the impact of these patriarchal norms, expectations, and structures on women.

There is a preference across the intersectional groups for home based economic work.

Gendered roles of care and domestic responsibilities are evident in each group. Economic empowerment through livelihoods seems to be the only route that allows women to negotiate their space and decisions within the family setting. Home based economies through informal employment routes, that enable working from home and its safety, are acceptable to the families of the women. All the project’s focus groups bar one consists of women who are related to each other – old aunts and young nieces, young cousins, relatives from the local area. Women travel for training and related work together, ensuring safety and trust through the physically company of a relative.

Early career researchers who are community based and engaged within youth groups have a strong desire to break away from micro identities and wish to be seen as change makers.

This is a space between practice and research. This holds true for each partner who is responsible for each aspect of research–inception of the project, selection and identification of case sites, focus group members, building of trust, collection and analysis of data, support for training, cascading of training, leadership for surveys, engagement and support for retail, commercialisation logistics, disbursal of funds to makers, and reporting. These individuals are key in providing localised insights into the work of the project and its impact on stakeholders and leading on the policy impact and engagement dimension of this research in local settings.

The value of local languages in communication inwards (i.e., within the project), is not always reflected when communicating outwards from the project, indicating that while there is diversity, there is also inequality based on colonial structures.

Early career researchers, for example, use local languages to communicate. However, this changes to English when communicating progress, outputs, and results and when they desire to publish. This places English as a more valued language for communicating knowledge and impact, which highlights the need to decolonise research.

Public interest and support for research commercialisation where communities of women are supported is high.

Feedback from three retail events indicates that over 93% of those who engaged in our public events strongly support research that supports women, and research that produces tangible impact.

Economic development is seen as a key pathway for peacebuilding by policymakers.

In all four nations, interest on the part of the policymakers during and after training is evidenced. Some of this can now be noted through follow-on funding that some of the partners have already received. Afghanistan is the exception: there is no engagement with Afghan policymakers in Kabul. All project trainings, exhibitions, and sales have policy engagement with country Ambassadors, Ministers and INGOs.

Local policymakers have shown interest, yet collaborations and knowledge exchange have limited value and possibilities in South Asia, where policymaking remains within the pyramid of power structures.

Policy engagement is viewed as the end stage of research activity, distancing research outputs from policy inputs. This is a traditional way of viewing research and remains the acceptable way of doing so in South Asia. Policy engagement within research methods and design would be of more value in many ways