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Dear all,
Please find below a photo related to my earlier contribution to this online discussion. The attached is a recently (this week) taken photograph of a grocery shop of one very remote hill district of western Nepal, namely, Jumla, and the shop full of junk food, gives us a message of how markets and privatization influence food habit ..... this is a serious challenge in regard to implementation of RTF guidelines. The photo has been sent to me by Shova Shakya and I thought I should share with you all.
Regards
Kanchan
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Effectiveness of the Right to Food guidelines :
Were the first ten years of implementation of the Right to Food Guidelines a success? Or were you disappointed? Is the glass half full or have empty?
The Right to Food guidelines remained partially successful in accommodating interests of the poor, women and children, which however faced challenge of maintaining the vital link to nutritional aspect of food. Moreover, supply of fast, packet food items (wai wai packet noodles, oil fried salty cheap but low quality imported snacks, etc.) was very active from business circle, leading to developing harmful food consumption practices in my country, widely covering the rural areas too. Most of the mothers in semi urban, urban and rural small head quarter areas took rest in such unhealthy food items by thinking it as a fashion of modern packet food, food of privileged social status and less time consuming (as the kinds eat them directly from the packets). In Nepal previously roasted maize and soybean seeds were very common and popular snacks for all family members, but now children prefer packets of market introduced foreign snacks replacing the healthier food. Thus I have doubts on the effectiveness of RTF guidelines in promoting genuine rights to food by the common mass, specifically by the most vulnerable groups, the children. The glass can be said to be empty in nutritional aspect while 49% of the children under 5 are stunting.
Looking at the last ten years, what are success stories of the progressive realization of the right to food? And what are the biggest challenges?
Very few people know about their right to food. The RTF guidelines have not been sufficiently and locally distributed. The various farmers’ federations and associations and professionals know about the guidelines and those who attend global farmers forums know about such policy guidelines, but the common people have not yet been aware about their right to food. It is a pity that FAO and IFAD, despite having implemented some significant food security projects, could not raise t he expected level of awareness and advocacy among right holders communities to access food right. Hence the success stories could be described as implementation of specific food security projects including improved food production, introduction of diversification of food production, specifically concept and practice of home gardens, vegetables (seasonal and off seasonal), commercialization of improved crops and vegetables, establishment of market channels for excess produce, capacity building of leader farmers (including women lead farmers), introducing measures of Cash and voucher for work programs along with food for work programs in order to enable the farmers make choices to buy local food and supplements on their own choices.
The biggest challenge is the existing superstitions regarding traditional intra-household food distribution systems, where despite having food, the concept of women as the “last eaters”, pregnant women suffer from anemic due to lack of nutrient values in their food and not having adequate food. This leads to birth of weak child. There are efforts done by UN agencies, e.g., FAO, WFP and UNICEF in partnership with Government Health sector and in partnership with national and local NGOs. However coordination among all stakeholders need to be strengthened and need to be more strategic to adopt guidelines on RTF.
How can the Right to Food Guidelines be used better to accelerate the realization of the right to food? What would be the role of the Committee on World Food Security?
Member states need to build partnership with relevant local institutions, develop awareness and do dissemination of the guidelines in local languages. Regular monitoring of implementation needed which should be informed to public widely through various locally adaptable means and mechanisms. The CWFS can play a strategic role to provide instructions to member states, organize multi-stakeholders’ inter-state sharing forums, review, monitor and reward the most successful actions on ground.
We are often criticized for doing advocacy only: Where is the evidence that a human rights based approach leads to better outcomes? What’s your answer to this challenging question?
In Timor Leste, the Right to Food Network, a team of local youths is active in establishing their claims to participate and own the process of public decisions regarding food security measures. The National Food security policy is gender responsive, inclusive of local indigenous knowledge and food habits, consisting of traditional food items, such as, cassava, sweet potatoes, baked fish, besides inclusion of youths’ interests. The government has a policy of ensuring that all feasts organized by government agencies must use traditional food, made of roots. The FTR group there keep advocating for human rights based food policy. Contact Ministry of Agriculture, Forests and Fisheries (MAFF) in Timor Leste for more information.
National food security policies must follow RTF guidelines at all levels and in all steps.
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Dear FSN Forum,
Thank you for sharing the draft version on political outcome on Nutrition on 12 may 2014 which is comprehensive and contains a reflects a strong political commitment to ensure enhanced situation on every aspect of nutritional health.However i miss an explicit commitment on special investment on tracking indigenous food habits of people of developing countries which is vital for their survival during difficult climatic condition and food insecurity situation. Thus rural women's knowledge about locally available nature based source of food might be marginalized by giving much weight to externally supplied food. In countries with very poor infrastructure for transport,food supply remains unsecured and irregular which imply that those remote people cannot have equal access to food like others from geographically privileged. In such situation,recognition to locally available food source is important, however due to lack of required attention for investment in research and development in this aspect, there has been a huge gap between local knowledge and managing food security measures of public agencies. I pledge that the document needs to give importance to this issue as an essential aspect of sustainability of food security chain.
My comments are also included in the template attached.
Thanks and regards
Kanchan Lama
Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Specialist (Freelancer)
Member, BoD, WOCAN (www.wocan.org)
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- What issues should be addressed by the Committee in the biennium 2016-2017?
Marginalization of women from policy making processes is an important area that needs to be addressed by investing on women farmers' leadership building. At the same time, in developing countries like Nepal, the public agencies yet not being satisfactorily accountable to respond to the gender gaps in food security and nutritional issues. Supply of good seeds, fertilizer, and related agricultural inputs by the service providers/duty bearers has been irregular and untimely. However where there is regular irrigation services, women oriented extension services and genuine locally managed private companies such as, agro vets , women feel less loaded and more motivated towards commercialized agriculture through crop diversification and market networking. Appropriate technology such as, integrated pest management, farmers field school, etc. have been rewarding to help women make better benefits encouraging their maximum contribution. In the coming years, more attention needed to be given towards
- leadership building of women farmers
- innovate time saving and labor saving technology for farmers,
- linking to private sector services, such as, mobile banking to encourage direct linkage between women and marketing
- strengthening locally established private agro vets
- strengthening women's cooperatives from where they can mobilize easy money for support agricultural production
- Promote regional network of women farmers to enhance "informal learning banks" from successful cases of improved production and marketing practices
- Promote "local women agriculturists" through informal training, extension education and certification based on proven cases rather than counting on formal education only
- Explain the issue and describe why you are proposing it;
Due to increasing male out migration, women farmers do suffer from increased workload and food insecurity due to leaving land fallow under the pressure of shortage of labor for agricultural work, increasing price of staple food items that they cannot afford, absence of appropriate market linkages and facilities for enabling the local farmers to market their production, women specifically suffer because most of them are inadequately informed about the available services and facilities and policies for extension services. In this context, building women's leadership in claiming services, inputs, technologies and benefits from agricultural duty bearers, they can manage food production and utilization effectively for nutrition and income.
- What kind of activity do you propose to address this issue? Which kind of CFS workstream should be put in place to address it?
Already answered under Q.1. Morever until and unless service provider organizations are made gender sensitive, efforts remain gender neutral or gender blind. Gender responsive budgeting and gender audit systems must be mainstreamed and carefully monitored by gender networks at country level along with mainstreaming status reports into overall CEDAW reporting and MDG reporting, which compel service providers to perform towards equitable service provisions. CFS workstream can be effective if they are more oriented towards ground level work, having good agricultural and nutritional qualification.
- A major workstream: gender balanced and field oriented , well qualified and more from local level extension workers
- Another type of workstream: Sociologists that can provide complementary assistance to the achievement of equitable impact
- An HLPE report
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This is a really very interesting and encouraging topic. I have come across some examples of INGO programmes where child care facilities (community based) have been implemented to allow women to use their time for economically productive activities including participation in water users group meetings, cash crop cultivation and livestock raising; however I don't know if it is linked to care farming methodology and approach. I would like to explore this in my country too and find out what examples are there ..!!
Regards
kanchan
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1. Do you have any general comments on the draft political declaration and its vision (paragraphs 1-3 of the zero draft)?
The draft political declaration is strategically strong, in all 3 areas, however data about declining or increasing number of population is very general while in reality, women and children are highly affected by malnutrition. Despite this fact being recognized here and there, gender disaggregation of data needs to be addressed in order to provide a true picture of the malnutrition status.
Loss of local food value: One basic reason of increasing malnutrition among the indigenous communities has been recognized as impacts of modern markets supplying junk food which discourage the indigenous food intake. The low recognition of nutritious value of indigenous food items by the food experts is a factor leading to marginalization of such locally available nutritious food.
2. Do you have any comments on the background and analysis provided in the political declaration (paragraphs 4-20 of the zero draft)?
The analysis seem to be based on older experiences and reports, whereas currently developing countries have been spending a large portion of national budget in security forces affecting investment in agriculture (example: Nepal invested 30% of budget in security forces in the last 10 years due to Maoist political conflict). Despite having priority set for agricultural investment, the countries investment in agricultural production need to be assessed and analyzed from food security angle. Moreover, mentioning about collaborative approach is not clear about ensuring rights of the small landholders' claims for land allocation, irrigation and credit, including single women who make a major group of farmers in the South Asia region as well as in Africa. Thus specific points of analysis of their needs, voice need to be reflected in these paragraphs.
3. Do you have any comments on the commitments proposed in the political declaration? In this connection, do you have any suggestions to contribute to a more technical elaboration to guide action and implementation on these commitments (paragraphs 21-23 of the zero draft)?
Technical collaboration with issue based organizations is very important, e.g., farmers organizations, women's agencies, youth and IPs, besides private companies.
The role of market that ensures quality food needs to be stressed more ina strategic manner
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1. If you were designing an agricultural investment programme, what are the top 5 things you would do to maximize its impact on nutrition?
1. Gender disaggregated data: Lack of formal identity of women as the household head or as the primary level farmer, often marginalize their involvement in the project cycle. There is a prime need to establish them as the primary level stakeholders. Conduct Gender Analysis at community level to demonstrate women’s involvement in activity level and the gaps in their access to resources and the constraints they face due to unequal relationship in decision making power. The analysis will also document what indigenous knowledge the women already have and their use of local, nature based food items, such as seasonally available wild vegetables, herbs, fruits, birds, insects, etc. to improve nutrition. In the advent of modern food items, some rural communities residing near to road heads have been diverted from practicing their traditional knowledge, which is not helpful for both conservation of biodiversity of wild edibles and also for locally available organic nutritional knowledge systems.
( We can learn lessons from IPM, farmers field schools kinds of activities of FAO in field, where women have been used maximum limit to make project successful , however their indigenous knowledge have not been counted in nutritional aspects while making plans. In FAO’s inter regional project “Empowerment of women in irrigation and water resource management for improved household food security, nutrition and health” (WIN), an approach was managed keeping women at the central, where women were involved at every stage of the project, from planning to evaluation and their knowledge about wild vegetables, herbs, roots and fruits as food supplement was documented and used for knowledge management on nutritional food preparation. The approach was effective also through collaboration under the coordination of Ministry of Agriculture among Ministries of Health, Women and Water resources, as well as FAO , WFP and WHO. However despite much appreciation, the Government institutions could not further the process.)
2. Gender responsiveness of service providers: Conduct assessment of the responsible service providers (public agencies, NGOs) in order to identify the areas of support to be provided for sensitization, enabling organizational restructuring, reorientation through developing a Gender Action Plan along with an Operational Strategy including setting rules (policies, systems, mechanisms) for accountability towards nutritional impact of agriculture. Without this kind of interventions, the efforts made at small holder farmers’ level might remain to be a “temporary project approach” only and do not get mainstreamed in the strategic institutions. ( Through “Women Organising for Change in agriculture and NRM”(WOCAN), I had facilitated a gender assessment within the Department of Agriculture in Nepal, where the then Director General (DG) Deep Bahadur Swnar remained highly supportive to bring in the senior level officials into the process. One Gender task force was formed and after developing ToRs for the task force collectively, the organization was assessed on gender mainstreaming in four pillars, e.g., political commitments, technical gender expertise, accountability and institutional culture. The strengths and gaps were analyzed and shared in the concerned groups. Later one Gender Action Plan was developed with indicators, of which some influence remained as of increase in number of women farmers in training (from 30% to 40%) and enhancing the already existing gender desk and gender working group, etc. However once the DG was transferred to another position, activities, focus remained weak in follow up and innovations. High budget cut in the government programs also caused certain constraints.
(Case of leadership): Another case of my work in Timor Leste inspired me which was some what different from Nepal. I used to work through UNIFEM as Gender advisor to Timor Leste Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries between 2007 to 2009. I facilitated an organizational assessment to identify areas for gender mainstreaming, through a gender taskforce group formed for gender mainstreaming. My counterpart was Maria Fransisca de belo Asis and my location was in the planning unit of the ministry. I was fortunate enough to get two organizational leaders , one planning Chief, Mr Octavio de Almeida and another Fransisca to take leadership on gender mainstreaming from within the institution. The ministry used the findings of the assessment and developed a Gender Action Plan , besides mainstreaming gender activities and budgets along with monitoring indicators as a system in the annual work plans. Most significant and shocking experience was that the honorable Minister made an unforgettable innovation by taking drastic action to appoint seven senior women officials in positions of departmental heads out of twelve, while the former ones were given status of consultants. One National Ministry taking such initiative is extremely important to give women’s portfolio high importance and thus, the Timor Agricultural Planning Chief was also included in the National CEDAW reporting team 2008 in the DAW CEDAW reporting meeting at the UN, NY. My point is that until and unless there is organizational commitment at the level of leadership on gender mainstreaming, all the ad-hoc project efforts remain temporary and unsustainable. In case of counting on nutritional improvement in agricultural projects, women involvement is crucial at all levels, from grassroots to the top policy making level, besides sensitizing both women and men on the values in an organization)
3. Targeting women as the main stakeholders in agricultural program is the most important strategy for attaining nutritional objectives. The women are the ones who manage daily meals, at least for two to three times a day in developing countries. They are knowledgeable but need to be empowered on their self confidence for making decisions to plant green vegetables, use seasonally available locally grown nutritious food items for preparing food, specifically for the pregnant women and children and for themselves. With increasing trend of commercialized agriculture interventions made by development programs, certain challenges are being faced by the rural women farmers, such as,-(a) tempted to produce larger amount by using chemical fertilizer, (b) sale the best products and reduce consumption at household level, (c) spending maximum time and labor to produce double (more by women) and face health hazard, (d) the discriminatory social norms and values positioning women producers as the secondary party in making decisions, in accessing services, accessing technologies, accessing market and above all, deciding on preparation of household food that could be nutritious rather than tasty only. (Recently I worked in a USAID funded and Chemonics International implemented project titled as Nepal Economic, Agriculture and Trade Activity project (NEATACTIVITY) in Nepal (2011 onwards) . The project rigorously adopted certain practical strategy to target women, particularly from the socially excluded groups, defined by the National Development Plan of Nepal. The project achieved more than 39% women staff, around 80% farmer group level and more than 60% as women farmer leaders and some as demonstration farmers. All project training ensured more than 50% women participation. However the strategic reasons for including women remained limited only to their role as actors, less as innovators and change agents related to household nutrition. The project aims at double production, thereby interaction by agriculturist technocrats with women farmers takes the trend of asking about their potentialities to join (and compete..!!!) men in producing more than before, in crops and cash. Gender roles and gender needs practical and strategic requirements made less importance. The issue of the increased food for household nutrition was not a focus in the project. Although the project contained defined indicators on nutrition, it was not given much priority, because technocrats had to remain too busy in managing technical performance of the project, besides managing the issues of lack of public responsibilities for supplying chemical fertilizer in time and required quantity. Moreover, gender specialist was never included in management related discussion rather treated as a specialist for the field technicians only. Furthermore, there was not any budget separated for gender actions under the PIRs. I had very little scope to work except requesting the component managers to consider gender integration in their programmes, but in absence of indicators defined under each PIR, there was very poor scope for me to proceed. Thus despite having a very good intention, sometime technically structured agricultural projects having too high ambition on double food production, leave behind the human aspects of development, provided human development indicators do not form a part of monitoring.
In fact when any agriculture development project targets women, the project could be more meaningful if it related to the knowledge and skills and constraints of women at every step, benefiting project management as well as the household nutrition and health of the poor communities which is a big problem in developing countries. In Nepal more than 50% children below five years were found stunting -2011 National Survey of Health Status)
4. Creating access to land, women friendly irrigation and credit: The poor women farmers face a situation of landlessness, lack of irrigation and lack of access to capital and credit. Organize alternative provisions for land use and credit for women. There are examples of collective firming by poor women groups and managing food for household nutrition and livelihood objectives in Nepal demonstrated by NGOs. Without making provisions for land and capital, credit, and micro irrigation, agriculture development cannot expect the poor women farmers in participation and benefit sharing.
(Case of WIN project: In the above mentioned WIN project, pro-poor women from excluded groups were organized through inter governmental government line agencies integrated planning approach to practice collective firming of vegetables to earn cash, increase purchasing power and to improve nutritional condition at household level. The land was obtained from village development committees, and in some areas, from landlords who had run away to cities in the fear of Maoist attack, in some places women took land on lease for collective firming. The FAO/GoN (government of Nepal) project
Invited partnership with IDE (International Development Enterprise), WFP and GTZ for assisting irrigation services for these women groups. The approach went very effective and project could help the landless women to produce vegetables to consume and sale. What we learned was that..there are resources within out approach, but we need to collaborate and coordinate for utilization by the real pro poor target women farmers at the end , for production and nutrition as well as improving livelihood. Land and irrigation are highly important for farmers)
5. Strengthen women ‘s leadership capacity/networking: The poor women farmers are hesitated to voice their needs , both practical and strategic and take lead in claiming services. Despite some existing service provisions within various programs in Government, NGOs, they seldom get information and sensitization about what and how to capture such funds and assistance. Even if they are informed, weak public level leadership discourage them from taking interest in these provisions. Agricultural programs should include social mobilization, gender sensitization and women leadership building activities with appropriate budget allocation. (investment on women’s leadership in various agricultural projects in Nepal turned out to be very fruitful. Specifically for two reasons, (a) women farmers contributing more than 70% work in agriculture and (b) agriculture being feminized as a result of increased male migration for employment, women have been facing a situation where agriculture related activities have become their world. However due to socio-cultural discriminatory values and norms , due to traditionally established institutional barriers for women’s inclusion in service provider institutions , women face maximum constraints to access information, resources , services, technologies and markets related to agricultural production. Due to absence of males in the villages, the rural women farmers often face problems to manage cultivation in their land, often leaving land fallow. However there has been insignificant efforts for empowering women in the sectoral development agendas, such as agriculture , irrigation, trade , etc. without which no any agricultural projects can achieve sustainable results, at least in countries like Nepal, where women are displaced from important managerial discussion processes despite being recorded as more than half of the contributors in agriculture.)
6. Monitoring, coordination and collaboration and networking through and with gender experts and organizations are essential activities that any agricultural programmes must adhere to.2. To support the design and implementation of this programme, where would you like to see more research done, and why?
During appraisal level participatory research on “gender analysis in agriculture” (Harvard/FAO analytical framework) and analysis of gender differential impacts (Rani parker’s tool) , analysis of practical needs and strategic interests of women (Moser’s framework) are very important to form a part of research in the program appraisal-design, planning, implementation and monitoring stages. During the appraisal phase, a complete gender analytical research needs to be commissioned on basis of which the project design includes a gender action plan for integration.
As I mentioned above, the institutional assessment is equally important to facilitate an enabling environment for women farmers and policy makers to act through a joint approach.
During design phase, a rapid assessment of institutional status on gender mainstreaming is important to identify the necessary activities to plan for capacity building of the implementers. (case from leasehold forestry project is relevant here. IN 1999-2001, I worked as a FAO technical expert for a IFAD funded national program titles as Leasehold Forestry and Fodder development project” (HLFFDP), where it was possible to identify need areas for building capacity of the government staff, including farmers. The Leadership given by the National project coordinator and the FAO’s CTA remained crucial for success on actions related to gender mainstreaming. The government staff involved in the project received an ad-hoc but government circulated job description to implement project level gender promotional activities. The research team on appropriate technology also adopted certain gender norms which remained very helpful to produce women friendly technologies in the field.)3. What can our institutions do to help country governments commit to action around your recommendations, and to help ensure implementation will be effective?
At the moment, FAO and such other multilateral agencies can help Nepal and other developing countries in the following areas:
• Assist facilitation of implementation of the National Gender Action Plans through Sectors
• Assist in research about women indigenous knowledge about locally available species from forest, river, rocks and land, such as, roots, herbs, vegetables, fruits, etc. and establish list of their nutritional value
• Support debates among activists, professionals to establish a definition on marginalization of women from access to opportunities, services and benefits as the “Sectoral Violence against Women (SVW)”, which is not limited only to domestic boundaries but is severely faced by women within institutions governing agriculture and others
• Review agriculture, trade and Irrigation policies and make them sensitive to women’s practical and strategic needs including values for indigenous knowledge on local food items
• Conduct research on impacts of climate change (also bio diversity) on the poor women and children, specifically on maternal health and nutrition, make strategies to address the identified issues/problems
• Support exchange visits among women farmer leaders to develop confidence and power through regional networks
• Assist research on women friendly technologies in the region so that Nepal can learn from others on improved technologies for women farmers saving time and labor and meeting market demands for quality.
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Kanchan Lama
Question 1: What are the main challenges rural women and girls are facing today?
The context of rural livelihood in developing country like Nepal has been changed into new characteristics, such as:
How do the needs and priorities of rural women differ based on their age, education, household composition, resource base and cultural context?
Across all castes and ethnicities, age factor is a common determinant factor for women to claim and access services. In Nepal, the rural society seldom sanctions open communication for younger women to men extension workers as well as going to market independently. They are also not allowed to decide on own about making choices for inputs, services or market mobility and participating in training and exposure visits, etc. This group of women is also required to take care of household chores, they are required to remain under control of husbands and both men and women–in-laws, whereas for elderly women these barriers are not very strong or less existent. In the same way, women from remote areas are more marginalized in accessing services and participation in agricultural development activities due to the lack of rural infrastructures, technologies, inputs suppliers, services and market infrastructures.
The views about extended families and nuclear families differ from women to women in regard to obtaining support from family members. Indigenous culture.
How do some rural women manage to move forward and become successful entrepreneurs, whereas others are trapped in a life of food insecurity and poverty?
Education, exposure and agriculture development projects have contributed to women’s position to influence household decisions in agricultural choices.
In 2011-2012, I worked as a gender specialist in Nepal Economic Agriculture and Trade Activity (NEAT) Project[1], the project intervention promoted women lead farmers by policy adoption for at least 40% women leader farmers. A 39% women lead farmers were developed. I want to mention one case below:
From Kailali district of western Nepal
One Tharu (indigenous) community woman developed as lead farmer initiated piloting of improved rice variety, when her father in law opposed, even saying that if the plantation fail, he will kick out his daughter in law from home. Despite having strong resistance from the family members, the lady continued to practice the improved variety; Later when the new variety produced three times more paddy than the usual production, the father in law began to claim, “My daughter in law is smarter than any other extension workers, she has done the best among all. Listen and learn from her, you will make better production.” In this case, the driver of her transformative decision making power or role can be credited to the project extension worker, who was also female and motivated the lead farmer to try for change, this not only enhanced the position of the daughter in law in production technology but also improved her RELATIONSHIP within the family.
In some cases, when women live as the household heads, or women living single have some different experience of being free to decide on their own. Although in some cases, they would not feel confident enough to give final decisions without asking their neighborhood men. This is because of the existing norms about “men knowing better than women” in Nepali society. Also sometimes due to their limited skills for marketing or asking agro services, they rely on men of neighborhood. However with the growing trend of women cooperatives and women farmers groups in some places, these days women feel comfortable to discuss their problems in groups.
Question 2: Are we using the right approaches and policies to close the gender gap?
Very recently Ministry of Agriculture and Development (MOAD) of Nepal has developed (UNWomen supported) a Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Strategy to mainstream gender equality and inclusion issues in the National Agricultural Development Strategy of Nepal.
MOAD has liberal policies to ensure involvement of women in all activities and services. However until and unless MOAD recruits rural women agriculture development extension workers, until Government provides special subsidy for poor , single women farmers, and until there is a special technology led and empowerment focused programme targeting women only groups, I do not think our rural women farmers could be given the appropriate share of respect and identity as the PRIMARY STAKEHOLDERS in agriculture development debates and planning. Even if women work more than 80% in agricultural fields, normally men are defined as farmers, not women. I think the first step must be that the government must acknowledge women ad the farmers and knowledgeable, ensure that local level officials and extension workers consist of 50% women and single and poor women farmers are given subsidized land, seeds, training and market linkage.
In Bhutan I saw how well the government has developed the beautiful, comfortable, women and child friendly market place , cleanest, most hygienic, with sanitation provisions, canteen facilities, where I saw majority shopkeepers were women only. The farmers pay a very minimal charge of USD 3 per month for the space for individual shop; some pay USD5 per month; I wish every municipality provides such market spaces for women (and men) farmers’ market.
In one study done in Jajarkot, a remote village of western Nepal, the women farmers wished they could have rural transport and roads so that they could supply their products by themselves to the daily market in the nearest town. In the absence of rural road and transport, the women farmers are compelled to rely on outsider middlemen for their marketing of vegetables and maize. So provide rural agriculture development roads.
Question 3: How can we best achieve gender transformative impacts?
What can be done to strengthen women’s voice and wellbeing in the household and the community? Many initiatives focus on empowering women in their productive role and as members and leaders of producer and community groups. While they become empowered in the public space, this does not necessarily translate into improved household dynamics and quality of life.
Support women farmers’ association, help them manage federations; provide young women farmers technologies for communication and marketing besides production. Organize empowerment focused social mobilization of women in groups’ power. Engage both women and men of the same families in gender sensitization courses. Encourage integrated development planning processes among various agencies for collaborative planning in food security nutrition purposes.
Has sufficient attention been paid in engaging men and boys for positive behavioural change? Do they understand the links between gender roles and inequalities, and their impact on the productivity and wellbeing of their households? Are their needs being overlooked, resulting in their marginalisation and disengagement from household development?
The trend of engaging men and boys along with women and girls has started in Nepal. We have men gender change agents developed by INGOs like CARE, Action Aid, etc. but very limited number. Yet this is a good initiation and has proven to be helpful for women’s advancement as well as men changing in attitude and behavior. This must be scaled up by government policy and strategies.
[1] The project was funded by USAID, operated by Chemonics and WOCAN (www.wocan.org) was sub contracted for gender activities.