3.1. Case study 1: Gender in community organizations
3.2. Case study 2: Gender policy for technology development
3.3. Case study 3: Ulipur village, Comilla district, Bangladesh
After the Inaugural Session and the Introduction, the participants were given a few case studies to open discussion. The idea was to get the participants to think about gender questions even before any instruction in the matter.
After a discussion of Cases 1 and 2, the participants were given Case 3, to be worked on in country groups, again without any prior instruction on gender analysis. The results of the group exercises were collected, with the idea that they would later be checked at the end of the course, with what participants would then think of the same matters. But, due to time constraints, this follow up was not carried out at the end of the course.
In the above example (in Himachal Pradesh, India) the NGO started to work on getting women collective control over common lands. Up to then, the forest department consulted the village Panchayat (council) about the type of trees to be planted on common land. The council was solidly male and commercial timber species were always planted. Various women's groups began to oppose this strategy; one group passed a resolution that unless the forest department planted at least 50% fodder species, they would uproot all the trees and replace them with fodder crops. They also demanded that in future the Forest Department should consult with the women's organizations as well as the village council; later this was taken further, to demand that the government should give the women's organizations the power and responsibility for deciding how the common lands should be developed.
[From Madbu Sarin, in "Local Organizations in Community Forestry Extension in Asia"
FAO/RWEDP, 1992, summarized in M.M. Skutsch.]
A group of men was invited to a village meeting to jointly plan a community forestry project. The men told the foresters that they wanted to plant hardwood tree species to make furniture and wood carvings to sell. Three thousand hardwood seedlings were provided. They all died. Why? Because in the village it was the task of women to care for seedlings; no one had told them that the seedlings were coming. Another meeting was held. This time the women were included. Foresters reamed that the women preferred soft wood fast-growing species for fuelwood and fodder. When the project provided seedlings of both types, satisfying the needs of both women and men, the women planted and watered all of them.
From Marilyn Hoskins, Gender Analysis and Forestry, in press, Sec. A, p. 6.]
Questions:
• Why are there differences between men and women in the choice of trees? Is it a matter of biology, or different areas of responsibility for the family?
• How can these differences be taken care of in a project?
"... the scenario is such that forests (land under forestry departments' control) are unlikely to be available for fuelwood production through the agroforestry approach in most developing countries. Similarly, food production will continue to be of top most priority so that it may not be prudent or feasible to envisage any substantial fuelwood production schemes on arable agricultural lands at the cost of food production. However, agroforestry can be of value in this context by:
• Incorporating and integrating appropriate species of woody perennials on farmlands along with other components of the farming system not in a competitive but in a complementary way;
• Integrating herbaceous crops and livestock on forest land according to the agroforestry management schemes so as to facilitate simultaneous production of wood and food crops; and
• Employing agroforestry techniques for reclamation of degraded lands and proper utilization of "wastelands".
"Some prototype agroforestry technologies for each of these situations are now available. Most of these have evolved through the trial-and-error approach of local farmers with practically no scientific input to improve them. The greatest scope for improving their efficiency and obtaining tangible results in such a program lies with the integrated food and fuelwood production initiatives in small holdings."
[From P.K.R. Nair, 1994, "Agroforestry and biomass energy/ fuelwood production' in Agroforestry Systems in the Tropics, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 597.]
Questions:
• Are there any gender differences in the knowledge of women and men that are not taken account of in the above analysis?
• What difference would any such differences make to design of an agro-forestry project?
Source of data: J. Briscoe: Energy Use and Social Structure in a Bangladesh Village
Ulipur is located in the deep-water flooding plain of the Meghna River. This land is only ten meters above sea level and becomes covered with a sheet of water when the rivers flood their banks in June. By the end of October, the waters have receded, leaving the land covered with a soft, fertile sand-clay silt. The area is heavily populated (750 per square km) and people live in bards, clusters of predominantly bamboo walled and straw roofed houses surrounded by trees and bamboo groves.
The population is divided both by religion and by income. There is a group of Hindu fishermen who live along the river banks at some distance from the rest of the village: the rest of the population is Muslim.
There is in Ulipur as in many villages in rural Bangladesh an interdependence between landowners and agricultural labourers, although this is less strong than formerly. Quite a large proportion of the population, in addition to the fishermen, are actually landless, and find employment with large farmers; other small farmers operate as sharecroppers or tenant farmers, sometimes also labouring for larger farmers to supplement their earnings. Land is held by the male head of household, there are very few households with women heads, and these are in all cases, widows with no land. Decisions on type of crop, when to plant etc are made by the male head of household. Labourers are also hired by the head of household, and paid by them. Selling of cash crops is done by the men, except in the case of low caste families in which women sometimes sell vegetables in the market. Women of poor families provide labour on the fields in all agricultural activities except ploughing, which is done by buffalo. Women from the richer families do not work in the fields and are more restricted by 'modesty' rules, to moving around only in the area of the house itself. Very few of the adult women have any education and girls are rarely allowed to stay in primary school more than four years, whether rich or poor.
Estimated fuel used for cooking and for parboiling rice is given in Table 1. It will be seen that crop residues, especially coarse rice straw (amon nara), and various types of better quality straw of other grain crops (kher) are very important. Dung hardly plays a part, although there is plenty available: there are 10 bullock and 10 working cows (for ploughing and threshing) plus 10 milk cows and about 20 immature beasts; the average dry dung production per animal is about 1.2 kg., of which the greater part is used for fertiliser. Firewood is available from a variety of sources. 'Other fuels' are biomass fuels gathered from wild (i.e. not cultivated) plants. These include doinshah, a tall weed which grows widely on bunds between fields, and bamboo.
The social set up has considerable significance for the use of fuel and for the potential to intervene in the fuelwood system in Ulipur. Workers are sometimes paid partly in kind as well as in cash: they may receive foodcrops, or agriculture residues as part of their wages, or in addition. Table 2 shows how social grouping affects the actual use of fuel in the village.
Different classes use approximately the same number of kilocalories to cook a kilogram of food, but richer people eat more so use more fuel (in a good year, such as 1977, the difference is not so great). However, the poor people experience difficulties, particularly in some seasons. Obviously, as 60% of fuels are crop residues, they are easier to obtain directly after the harvest (there are two cropping seasons per year). However these fuels are not so easy to preserve and store, partly because many families do not have room to sun dry plant materials in their courtyards, which are very cramped in the case of poor families.
Table 1 Annual Use of Fuel in Ulipur
Fuel Type |
Quantity of Fuel in 103 Kcals/Person/Year |
Percent |
Crop residues |
||
From village |
||
Amon nara |
633 |
38.3 |
Amon kher |
23 |
1.4 |
Aus kher |
18 |
1.0 |
Boro kher |
15 |
0.9 |
Grain husks |
88 |
5.3 |
Jute sticks |
32 |
1.9 |
Sesamum plant |
48 |
2.9 |
Mustard plant |
29 |
1.7 |
Chili plant |
6 |
0.4 |
Total crop residues from village |
891 |
54.0 |
Amon nara from char outside village |
85 |
5.1 |
Animal residues |
||
Cow dung |
46 |
2.7 |
Firewood (including twigs and branches) |
||
From village trees |
167 |
10.8 |
From river (bhaza-lakri) |
72 |
4.4 |
Purchased from bazaar |
85 |
5.2 |
Total firewood |
324 |
20.3 |
Other fuels |
||
Doinshah |
81 |
4.9 |
Bamboo |
60 |
3.6 |
Water hyacinth |
27 |
1.6 |
Other crop residues and leaves |
136 |
7.6 |
Total other fuels |
305 |
17.7 |
Total, all sources |
1,615 |
100.0 |
Table 2 Fuel Use by Different Social Groups During the Study Period
Percent of Total Consumption for | |||||
Hindu Fishermen |
Muslims | ||||
Fuel |
Landless |
Poor |
Medium |
Rich | |
Sesamum shrub |
0.3 |
0.0 |
1.5 |
10.3 |
10.2 |
Hanza kuta |
1.2 |
3.2 |
10.7 |
8.6 |
16.6 |
Grain husks |
2.7 |
4.1 |
6.9 |
12.7 |
17.3 |
Ghoita |
0.0 |
1.3 |
5.3 |
3.2 |
4.7 |
Jute-sticks |
0.5 |
1.5 |
0.9 |
0.7 |
4.5 |
Doinshah |
1.4 |
7.5 |
5.3 |
9.3 |
7.5 |
Nara |
25.0 |
38.4 |
26.0 |
33.2 |
19.2 |
Lakri |
46.9 |
26.8 |
31.1 |
9.0 |
10.8 |
Bamboo |
16.6 |
3.1 |
1.2 |
4.8 |
1.5 |
Water hyacinth |
0.0 |
4.8 |
1.7 |
1.8 |
1.8 |
Table 3 Ownership of Fuel-Producing Assets (per family)
a One decimel = 1/100 acre.
Muslims | |||||
Hindu Fishermen |
Landless |
Poor |
Medium |
Rich | |
(Number of familiar) |
(8) |
(14) |
(11 ) |
(8) |
(8) |
Land (decimelsa) |
|||||
Median |
0 |
8.5 |
66.0 |
126.5 |
242.0 |
Mean |
0.7 |
9.5 |
65.2 |
135.1 |
295.8 |
Trees |
|||||
Median |
0 |
6.0 |
8.0 |
16.0 |
182.0 |
Mean |
2.0 |
11.1 |
12.2 |
17.5 |
209.0 |
Cattle |
|||||
Median |
0 |
0 |
0 |
10 |
4.0 |
Mean |
0 |
0.3 |
1.3 |
1.3 |
2.6 |
Exercise Using Case Study E
Case study E concerns a village in the floodplain in Bangladesh. Read the description of the village, its economics and social structure, and its fuel economy.
Problem
The regional commissioner, after visiting the village one day, was appalled to see how difficult it was to obtain firewood and how women often have to use very poor quality residues for cooking, or pay high prices for wood brought in from distant forests and sold in the village market. He proposed that a social forestry project should be set up to improve the situation, particularly for the poor women who cannot afford to buy wood.
Question 1
From table 2 it is clear that different social groups in the village use quite different proportions of fuel of different types. Try to explain why this is so. Work fuel by fuel through the list and come up with plausible reasons. Make a list of the reasons.
Question 2
The regional commissioner has specified a social forestry project, especially to benefit the poor women in the village. What factors may limit the participation of poor women in such a project in Ulipur, or the flow of benefits from such a project to them? Be as specific as you can, relating your analysis to the data presented rather than to generalisations. What in your view would be the best strategy to help poor women obtain better quality fuel more easily? What alternatives to social forestry would you recommend, if any?
