Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

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:

  • Increased migration of men of working age
  • Increased in flow of remittance money
  • Shortage of men labourers
  • Increased workloads of women
  • Changing gender role
  • Due to labor shortage, parts of agricultural land is left fallow  
  • Due to heavy work burden and also under discriminative socio-cultural barriers, women still face problems in freedom of mobility and decision making, such as, over seeds, credit and market linkages, resulting on cutting down the coverage of agriculture.
  • At the same time, it results on women’s overburdening of physical work and mental tension, such as, seeking labor to till the land, bargaining for labor charge with tractors for ploughing; in some cases, specially in case of single women, they face negative comments from society when asking for other men to help in agricultural work.
  • Thus, rural women farmers, with their low literacy skills, less or no exposure, lack of access to information, technology and credit, together with absence of women extension workers, face a harder working condition in agriculture fields.
  • Even if they get some consideration in agricultural inputs and services, it is not equitably distributed (despite Government policy guides equitable distribution of resources);
  • There is deeply rooted caste discrimination making equitable distribution of resources impractical at the ground, under the culture of domination of higher case women and richer women over other so called low caste and poorer women; intersectionality is an element affecting equitable sharing of benefits from development.               
  • Young women and men hardly undertake agriculture; however those who are occupied with agriculture, they hardly have access to agricultural technologies;
  • Nevertheless some young women participate in agriculture training now as their mothers are less literate and over engaged with household chores and other agricultural work. The men youths complain that due to agriculture development policy provision, all agriculture training include more women (40% to 50%) rather than men participants. (based on findings of a research conducted by Women Leading for Change in NRM with Glasgow Caledonian University, UK, 2016).

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.