Lucknow Women Create UP's First All-Woman Green Concrete Eco-Brick Unit

By: WE staff | Friday, 25 April 2025

• A team of 30 women in Lucknow are striving to set up Uttar Pradesh's first all-woman green concrete eco-brick production unit
• The project is titled ‘Nirman’ by Women and is being led by Ventura Prefab, a private firm

Pushing the nation ahead towards gender equality in the construction sector, 30 determined women from Lucknow are leading the way at Uttar Pradesh's first all-women green concrete eco-brick manufacturing unit. Called "Nirman by Women," this is powered by Ventura Prefab in collaboration with the State Rural Livelihood Mission (UPSRLM).

But it's more than building environmentally sustainable, high-strength bricks—it's about building confidence, self-sufficiency, and breaking deeply entrenched stereotypes in a field where women have been backroom specialists for far too long. In an industry where 12 percent of the workers are women, and mostly fill the underpaid second-tier positions, these women are penning their own script—a brick at a time.

What is different about this program is that it is educating women in primary, male-dominated jobs such as machine operation, batch mixing, and concrete moulding. This shift is already transforming lives. Poonam Sharma, a single mother who escaped an abusive marriage, now works at the unit with her six-month-old baby beside her. She regards this as her passport to independence and a better future for her child.

Manta Devi went against family opposition to participate in the training, wanting to make her own money. Akanksha Singh, just 18 and waiting to hear the results of her board exams, hopes to start a startup to fund her family after having sold their land to pay for her father's cancer care. For Rajani Devi, meanwhile, a mother in the village of Khasrawa, this job is her opportunity to get education for her children in the midst of a one-income family.

The training programme, under civil engineer Avadheesh Srivastava, revealed both challenges and breakthroughs. Few had significant exposure to science, but much curiosity and grit to offer. Machine trainer Kuldeep pointed out how rapidly they picked up operations once they had a grasp of the fundamentals, while mentor Kavita Bhatnagar indicated that winning their trust took concerted efforts and urging.

Rashmi Sinha, founder of the project and a previous UN contributor on gender issues, stressed that though the training is about to end, the momentum for sustained change has merely just started.