A Technical Consultation on Rural Women and Technology Transfer: November 1998

A technical consultation on " Rural women and Technology Transfer" is proposed to be held, at FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. It is expected that the technical consultation, with the participation of experienced development professionals, will provide a forum to explore the achievement to date and bottlenecks for technology transfer to Asian rural women and to identify innovative practices that have the potential for replication. The anticipated outcomes of the consultation are: a) to document the selected constraints faced in transferring technology to rural women; b) identify innovative technology transfer processes that advance effective participation of rural women in their productive enterprises such as in agriculture, livestock and fisheries as well as in non-farm production and to alleviate household drudgery and c) to develop recommendations for FAO and country actions to improve rural women's access to technology through innovative methods. These issues will be addressed in the context of technology environment of rural Asia. The participating countries are: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Nepal, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam , Thailand, and Mongolia.

Asian rural women invariably have multiple productive roles in agricultural and rural communities set in a constantly changing technological environment. As new technologies, techniques and innovations enter their social and economic environment, women's lives are affected either positively or adversely. Communication and information technologies are progressively entering the rural communities of Asia. Across the region an examination will reveal urban-rural differences among women both in daily access to technologies and capability to manage emerging technologies. In general, Asian rural women have relatively lower education attainment, which adversely impacts them as individuals who struggle to improve their productivity but unable to take advantage of emerging technologies. At national level women's lag in education drags down the efficiency of using the non-human factors of production including new technologies. Additionally, "limited resources and cash generally restrict women's use of technologies that might increase their productivity and give them access to credit, education, and land," (Ahmed , 1985). Viewed from user perspective, two important dimensions of technology that influence the choice and use of technology by rural women are affordability and appropriateness. The affordability dimension is linked to the access to cash, credit or exchangeable resource to own or use technology. The appropriateness dimension is the match between the user capability (education skill, time, knowledge and experiences) and the technology. Women burdened by their domestic task and family obligations and controlled by social restraints, face constraints to allocate time to be away from home to attend training programmes. Furthermore, poor rural infrastructure development, such as inadequate domestic water distribution and long search for fuel and inadequate transportation facilities increase women's workload and reduces their time for learning new technologies and for experimentation. Hence, a task ahead of us is to identify strategies for technology transfer to help rural women to function efficiently in a world which is increasingly being managed by complex technologies and to decrease gender gap in technological know-how and technology access. It is the expectation of the consultation that participants drawing from their expertise and experience will identity strategies to improve the technology transfer processes to reach rural women and support their sustained access to and application of new technologies as a means to improve household productivity.