by Dr. R. Balakrishnan
Introduction
1. Rural women in Asia: current status
2. Rural women's access to productive resources
3. Impact of Asian macrotransitions on rural women
4. Institutional support to Asian rural women
5. Recommendations
References
Asian economies present a mixed picture of countries with impressive growth and those that are burdened by the economic ills of low incomes and food deficits. Even with such differences in economic performance, agriculture continues to be the dominant sector in the region and of strategic importance to poverty alleviation and sustainable food security. Although transformation is in progress, the large majority of the poor in the developing countries in the region continue to live in rural areas and are dependent on agriculture or agriculture-related activities for their livelihoods.
Women play important roles in agriculture and food security in rural areas. Any economic strategy for agriculture and rural employment linked to poverty alleviation and food security must, therefore, consider gender equity and women's contributions as central issues in productivity and access to resources. The urban informal sector is also dominated by women as food vendors and small commodity traders earning income for household food security. Moreover, women are the food buyers and those who create use value for food at household level. In all these roles women have a vested interest in the sustainability of ecological resources, the community resource base and local market systems.
The daily life of rural women in the region is characterized by the search for water, fuel and inputs for either agriculture or household production in their common pursuit of household livelihood security, including food security. In the region, women's roles and constraints in contributing to household food security must be viewed in the context of the ecological resource base, food trade, liberalization of trade and transformation to open market economies, employment opportunities, access to technology and technical knowledge, and input supply. Within such a complex resource environment and amid the debate on food trade or food self-sufficiency for food security, the Asian regional scenario of gender equity is also characterized by diversity. It is a diversity marked by varied national priorities and levels of commitment to actions to achieve gender parity in development and by differences in urban and rural considerations and achievements in gender equity.
This chapter analyses women's participation in the various sectors of food production and examines the constraints that women face regarding access to productive resources. It pays particular attention to the impact of Asian macrotransition on rural women and the institutional support given to them. It finally formulates a set of recommendations to achieve gender equity gains for rural women.
1.1 Women's participation in the labour force
1.2 Women's roles in farming systems
1.3 Rural women and biological diversity
1.4 Rural women in the cash crop sector
1.5 Rural women in fishing communities
1.6 Rural women in the post-harvest sector
1.7 Rural employment and enterprises of rural women
1.8 Female-headed households and rural household production
1.9 Female children and rural household production
A general view of Asian women's status reveals a scenario of diversity, characterized by disparity in women's economic achievement, political participation, educational advancement and social articulation. The gains in these areas, especially among urban women, tend to mask the constraints that are often confronted by rural women within the region. Rural women in Asia continue to struggle under the dual burden of production and domestic labour and are confronted by poverty, lack of access to productive resources, illiteracy, high health risks and denial of market access in profitable food sectors. The status of women in Asia could be summed up as "duality" characterized by the "coexistence of gender equity gain and gender equity gap amid economic prosperity and abject poverty". In China and India, disparities within the countries should also be recognized.
The central challenges confronting Asian development efforts are: 1) achieving gender equity gains for women in agriculture and rural communities parallel to urban gender gains; 2) creating opportunities for rural women to be the principal agents in poverty eradication; and 3) achieving household food security with gender equity.
Intercountry variances are illustrated in the national indicators of women's labour force participation in the agricultural sector and gender development as reviewed in Table 1. An overall comparison among the indicators of the human development index (HDI), the gender-related development index (GDI) and the percentage distribution of the labour force of women in agriculture shows an interesting pattern. In general those countries that fall under the categories of low and medium HDI, also have relatively lower achievement in GDI. The relatively high achievers in HDI and GDI also record a relatively low percentage of women's participation in the agricultural labour force, with a few exceptions. This is an indicator of urban-rural disparity in gender equity in the key measurement variables of HDI and GDI. Such a disparity is of significance, since it is an indicator of the relatively low status of rural women in life expectancy, educational attainment and income. Rural women should, therefore, be the target of planned interventions to hasten human resource development and achieve sustained economic and social progress in the region.
In most developing countries within the region, women make up a substantial portion of the agricultural labour force.
In most South Asian countries, employment opportunities in the formal sector had virtually stagnated during the period under review (1985 to 1993) and a large increase in the labour force has added to the stock of workers employed in the vulnerable informal sector. It has been shown conclusively that women bear the brunt of poverty disproportionately. One facet of the manifestation of women's survival strategies under poverty conditions is to extend their working hours inordinately, at home and outside, in order to earn enough cash to feed and maintain the family. The neglect of the agricultural sector in many countries makes it a career of last choice, hence the "feminization" of farming (UN/ESCAP, 1995).
The "feminization" of farming is a growing phenomenon as countries adopt rural employment schemes in small-scale industries, self-help group microenterprises, town and village enterprises and urban job alternatives that lure away capable young women and men from agriculture, particularly in Bangladesh, China and India. In addition, such pull factors of internal migration can also cause the "graying" of farming, a growing phenomenon where the elderly, particularly older women, become the principal farmers, as is being witnessed in China.
A common shortcoming of macrostatistics is the undercounting of women's extensive participation in production, in both agriculture and income-generating labour within the informal sector. An illustrative case is Pakistan, which registers only 15 percent of women in the Labour Force Survey although its 1980 Census of Agriculture estimated that 73 percent of women in agricultural households were economically active. The Labour Force Survey in 1990/91 showed women's economic activity rates of 7 percent when using the conventional questionnaire and 31 percent when questions on specific activities such as transplanting rice, picking cotton, grinding, drying seeds and tending livestock were also included. Similar misperceptions and undercounting of rural women's work in India and Bangladesh were also reported (UN, 1995).
It is possible that women's economic contributions may have been reported under the categories of employed on own account workers and unpaid family workers. It is very likely that similar undercounting of women workers is a common phenomenon across Asia, irrespective of the remarkable improvements in census methods, statistical services and statistical training. Although, since 1975, much effort has gone into gathering gender data, the task remains unfinished and a paucity of gender-disaggregated data persists. The persisting data deficiency is a major barrier to developing women-friendly policies and programmes in the agricultural and allied sectors (Table 1).
To measure Asian rural women's contributions to agricultural production and rural development, a reliable count of women's work is needed. Such reliability can only be achieved by: 1) broadening the definitions of women's work with the contribution of Asian professionals (in both agriculture and social science); 2) training Asian professionals in the development of gender-disaggregated database and census data; and 3) convincing the appropriate national ministries and agencies (including FAO) to address data deficiencies and the limitations on the effective utilization of the rural labour force resulting from the gender data gap.
Table 1 Selected indicators of human development and women's participation in agriculture and economic activities: countries in Asia
|
Countries in Asia |
Human development index rank HDI |
Gender development index rank GDI |
Percentage distribution of labour force of women in agriculture |
Employed on own account workers: percentage |
Unpaid family workers: percentage |
|
1996 |
1996 |
1994 |
1990 |
1990 |
|
|
Bangladesh |
143 |
116 |
65 |
5 |
6 |
|
Bhutan |
159 |
- |
95 |
- |
- |
|
Cambodia |
156 |
- |
75 |
- |
- |
|
China |
108 |
79 |
74 |
- |
|
|
DPR Korea |
83 |
- |
41 |
27 |
69 |
|
India |
135 |
103 |
78 |
- |
- |
|
Indonesia |
102 |
76 |
44 |
27 |
66 |
|
Iran |
66 |
75 |
69 |
4 |
43 |
|
Japan |
3 |
12 |
- |
|
|
|
Laos |
138 |
106 |
76 |
- |
- |
|
Malaysia |
53 |
43 |
31 |
24 |
64 |
|
Maldives |
107 |
80 |
25 |
22 |
2.9 |
|
Mongolia |
113 |
83 |
28 |
- |
- |
|
Myanmar |
133 |
102 |
35 |
- |
- |
|
Nepal |
151 |
124 |
97 |
- |
- |
|
Pakistan |
134 |
107 |
15 |
|
- |
|
Philippines |
95 |
70 |
34 |
30 |
53 |
|
Republic of Korea |
29 |
31 |
31 |
27 |
87 |
|
Sri Lanka |
89 |
62 |
50 |
18 |
59 |
|
Thailand |
52 |
33 |
64 |
27 |
64 |
|
Viet-Nam |
121 |
91 |
57 |
...... |
..... |
Sources: Columns 1 and 2, UNDP, 1995.Columns 4, 5 and 6, The world's women 1995: trends and statistics. United Nations: New York.
- Data not available or not reported separately.
The human development index (HDI) is based on three indicators: longevity, as measured by life expectancy at birth; educational attainment, as measured by a combination of adult literacy (two-thirds weight) and combined primary, secondary and tertiary enrollment ratios (one-third weight); and standard of living, as measured by real GDP per caput.
The gender development index (GDI) uses the same variables as HDI. The difference is that GDI adjusts the average achievement of each country's life expectancy, educational attainment and income in accordance with the disparity in achievement between women and men.
The growth of microstudies across the region is a positive phenomenon balancing the limitations of the macrodatabase. In particular, the focus on farming systems led to agrizone or location-specific gender roles studies, which document the roles of men and women in agriculture and allied production, in most of the Asian countries. These microstudies contribute to a greater understanding of women's roles in rice farming systems, livestock-crop systems, livestock aquaculture systems, rice-fish production systems, home gardens, post-harvest activities and processing.
The activities sponsored by the Women in Rice Farming System Network based at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) have contributed to developing a scientific knowledge base of women's contributions to Asian production systems. Similar contributions to the knowledge of women's roles in aquaculture and fisheries can be credited to the International Centre for Living Aquatic Resources Management (ICLARM). This information has been further enriched by the farming systems research and location-specific studies on women in agriculture and allied production and rural enterprises carried out by national and international researchers of various national institutions.
A general pattern of gender roles that emerges from these studies is that, in Asian farm households, both men and women contribute to production, but the gender roles vary by region, agro-ecological system, type of farming systems, crops grown, interlinks with livestock and fish production, and opportunities for off-farm occupation for family members. There is much evidence from these studies that women contribute substantially to the family food needs as active labour in production and post-harvest processing and as sellers in the informal market (CRIFC and IRRI, 1990; Illo and Veneracion, 1988; University of Philippines, Los Banos, IRRI and Philippine Institute of Development Studies, 1988; Poats, Schmink and Spring, 1988; Chen et al., 1986).
As documented in rural Viet Nam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia and the Philippines, where agriculture is the mainstay of economic activity, women are always seen toiling in the rice fields; cultivating the field, planting, transplanting, fertilizing, weeding, irrigating, harvesting and engaging in post-harvest activities (UNICEF). In Bhutan, with the exception of bunding and ploughing, women are involved in the entire agricultural process and rural women earn income through sales as well as through waged labour (Ehsan, 1993).
These widely dispersed microstudies contain important findings on gender roles with implications for policy guidelines and programmes to improve the productivity of rural households. A systematic synthesis of these findings by country can provide a more realistic scenario of rural women's roles in household food security and can guide policy and programme interventions.
In addition, in the Asia region, home gardens and urban periphery vegetable gardens also depend on women's labour. In the Maldives, women's home gardens provide household food security. In Bangladesh, women's contributions to the production of fruits and vegetables in the homestead, along with poultry and livestock raising, vegetable and fish cultivation, tree planting and crop processing, bring in a substantial share of the total family income. Women, more often than men, are involved in cultivating vegetables and planting fruit trees (Safilos-Rothchild and Mahmud, 1989). For most women many of the farm activities are an extension of their domestic production responsibilities. Irrespective of their responsibility for production, post-harvest activities and marketing, rural women continue to have the primary responsibilities for domestic activities including the hard physical tasks of water, fuel and fodder collection and gathering wild foods. The domestic drudgery, intensive labour and time required by water and fuel collection is further aggravated by the degradation of ecological resource bases.
Asian rural women also play a key role in the sphere of biological diversity as seed selectors, biological diversity managers in home gardens and keepers of local knowledge of food crops, medicinal plants, wild foods and forest products. Various studies in the region show the current and potential contributions of rural women as guardians and managers of the biological diversity of the Asian region. A few examples are cited here.
A study in northeastern Thailand concludes that home gardens can be viewed as experimental stations in which women transfer, encourage and tend indigenous species, trying them out and adapting them for use. As a result, these gardens often represent a refuge where less common species and varieties are preserved (Moreno-Black, Somnasang and Thamthawa, 1994). In South Asia "women have customarily been seed selectors and preservers in rice growing regions.... Aiding them in these tasks is their indigenous knowledge accumulated from day-to-day experience, gained from their participation in agriculture" (Seshu and Dadlani, 1989). The role of Asian rural women in biological diversity management and the implications for household food security should be documented as relevant to policy advice and programme interventions in ecological resource management and food security.
Asian women's contribution to rice cultivation has transformed India, Viet Nam and Thailand into net exporters of rice, a testimony to their economic role in the cash crop economy. Women's labour in tea, coffee and rubber plantations is also crucial to the cash crop sector as well as to household income, which is a basic determinant of access to food.
Fish and fish products are an integral part of the diet of many cultures and are an important economic enterprise for the people of the region. Women are active in both artisan fisheries and the commercial fishery sectors. Their activities range from shallow water fishing in artisan fisheries to waged labour in the commercial fishery sector. In such a wide range of activities women are important contributors to both national and household food security while their labour adds to the foreign earnings of the countries.
In parts of India, women net prawns from backwaters. In Laos, women fish in canals. In the Philippines, women fish from canoes in coastal lagoons (FAO, 1987). In reviewing the contribution of women in the Bay of Bengal region, Madhu (1989) identifies the diversity of women's roles in the fishery sector: "apart from activities as wife, mother and homemaker (which engage them from dawn to dusk) fisherwomen market fish as retailers, auctioneers or as agents of merchants; make and repair nets; collect prawn seeds or fish seeds from backwaters to supply fish farmers; work as labourers for shrimp processing firms; dry and salt fish; and prepare a variety of fish products". National initiatives to support women's productive activities in fisheries and aquaculture should be supported by developing comprehensive household and community food security programmes.
Asian rural women play vital roles in post-harvest activities in food crops, cash crops, horticulture and sea harvest. These roles are as diverse as: processing paddy to rice by milling in Indonesia; making puffed rice in Nepal; chopping bamboo shoots for pickling and canning in Japan; processing oilseeds in China; cleaning and slicing fruits and vegetables for canning in India; drying fish in Sri Lanka; making kimchee preserves in Korea; and canning export tuna in Thailand. In addition, in millions of Asian rural households, the domestic responsibility for food processing is vested with women. As the economies in the region become increasingly urbanized, leading to greater demand for packaged and convenience foods, more women will be drawn into the post-harvest sector. Parallel to the formal growth in post-harvest responsibilities, women are also the primary food processors for the informal food vending sector that caters to a demand for less expensive street foods.
In the countries with the highest concentration of people in rural areas, such a Bhutan, Laos and Myanmar, employment and income-generating activities for most women are confined to farm-related work in the rural areas. Enterprising women are often self-employed as traders or shopkeepers in suburban areas, as is seen in the Philippines' rural economic sector which is dominated by sari-sari stores managed by women. Food selling in the informal sector is a low-risk economic enterprise with dual food security purposes; women earn cash income as well as feed the family with the unsold food.
Amid the continuing argument on the definition of female-headed households, the fact remains that there are substantial numbers of households headed by women in the Asia region. Mencher (1993) argues that in the Indian subcontinent, the focus should be on female-supported as well as female-headed households, because the issue at stake is the survival of households. Increased male migration, caused by the marginalization of agriculture, overseas employment and urban employment opportunities, has contributed to the emergence of female-headed or women-supported households in the Philippines, China and India. In these countries, a subgroup of rural households that are managed by women could have a relatively better-off economic status because of the remittances from family members who are overseas migrants.
In the rural areas of the Philippines, India and Thailand, migration leaves behind a large female population responsible for agricultural production as well as for investing overseas earnings in land-based and related enterprises in the rural economies. In China, women can be farmers and rural entrepreneurs because of government-directed planned internal migration to meet the demands for labour for economic transition endeavors (Croll, 1995). In Bangladesh, landless men seeking waged income in the urban sector leave behind women who support families. A study in a Bangladesh village identified that, in households headed by widows, poverty is the single most dominant characteristic (Islam, 1993). Hence, an analysis of the hardship of women-headed or women-supported rural households, differentiated by economic class, should guide planned interventions.
In general the male perception, fostered by cultural traditions and social biases, that women cannot be heads of household continues to persist and creates barriers to access to economic opportunities for these women. Singh (1993) observes that: "In India, despite a national policy identifying female-headed households as a special target group for development assistance, there has not been an operationalization of this policy at the state or local level". Rural women who are major contributors to household income and female-headed households in the economically disadvantaged and socially marginalized groups have to be identified as a subgroup of stakeholders.
Yet another labour phenomenon of Asian agriculture and rural enterprises is the role of female children as unpaid contributors to household production. In their various responsibilities as helpers in subsistence farm production, informal food vending, minders of livestock, gatherers of fuel and water and surrogate mothers for siblings when the mother works in the field and other informal sectors, they are an essential component of the household labour force in agricultural communities and rural areas. The standard labour force count, which includes only the age group from 15 to 55 years old, ignores the contributions of female children. The issue is a crucial one to consider as it has an impact on the educational and economic gains for the future generation of women in rural and agricultural communities.
2.1 Land
2.2 Common property resources
2.3 Credit
2.4 Extension service delivery
2.5 Technology
The productive resources that are integral to improve agricultural productivity and farm household livelihood security are land, credit, technology, agricultural inputs and extension. Access to rural employment and enterprise opportunities are also important means to poverty alleviation and food security. This section reviews the status of rural women's access to selected resources.
In the Asia region, the most comprehensive analysis of gender and land rights in South Asia can be credited to Agarwal (1994a). Her work systematically documents the existing social and cultural biases that distort the intent of inheritance laws and the inadequacies of government policies that exclude women from or limit their landownership. She indicates that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have also ignored women's rights to own land. A major concern is that "the issue of women and land, even today, remains one of marginal, not central concern of development policy in South Asia. What is especially striking is the disjunction between public policy formulation and the rights encased in personal law." She attributes this situation to the redistrubutive land reform programmes which continue to be modeled on the notion of a unitary male-headed household with titles granted only to men, except in households without adult men where women (usually widows) are clearly heads (Agarwal, 1994b).
Women's landownership by itself does not ensure that women can be independent decision-makers and successful cultivators in Asian societies, where men are accorded greater social prestige and credited with greater wisdom in the sphere of economic transactions. Such social undervaluation of women can undermine any gains accrued from providing women with land title.
Another school of argument is that, while women may lack landownership rights, they have access to family land. Such a land access rationale is justified on the basis of the "family centrism value" of Asian societies that encourages extended family structure and intergenerational households. In countries that have a socialist economy, such as China, Viet Nam and Laos, women have access to land through the means of central allocation per caput (UNICEF). Particularly in China, land is distributed by the state in relation to family size and, thus, theoretically a larger household has access to more land, while both men and women can cultivate the land. At this juncture the argument shifts to access to the products of the land in relation to the labour invested.
Across Asia, rural women's access to common property resources and forests determines their ability to access basic resources that have an impact on household food security as well as on the success of their micro-enterprise ventures (Venkateswaran,1992; Rodda 1993). It is an issue that will be in the forefront as forest degradation continues and common property resources are consumed by the commercial sector. A simple illustration is the case of the disappearance of mangroves to make way for commercial shrimp production in Bangladesh.
In the Asia region, credit has been widely recognized as a crucial resource for women to alleviate poverty, and development interventions have been designed to serve the credit needs of rural women. "Most of the credit programmes are carried out as special programmes of government development banks, as bank-NGO linked projects or as specialized banks with specific focus on poor women. Although these programmes have succeeded in releasing the productive and income-generating potential of over 1 million poor women borrowers, the scope remains limited compared to the total population of women at the absolute and relative poverty thresholds." (UN/ESCAP, 1995.) Women also play an important role as moneylenders in Asia. In Myanmar and Thailand, in the absence of social constraints, a considerable number of women have become moneylenders. In Laos, women dominate the semi-formal and informal financial sectors.
The same UN document identifies five categories of impediments to women's access to formal sector credit: institutional, socio-cultural, economic, attitudinal and geographical. The institutional impediments are marked by cumbersome procedures, costly requirements and collateral. Economic impediments are characterized by high-risk, low-yield farming and income-generating activities and costly delivery. In the socio-economic dimension, norms, social taboos, religious practices, caste discrimination and illiteracy are barriers to women's access to credit. Such a situation is further complicated by attitudinal biases such as prejudices against women and misconceptions of the bankers. Geographical limitations arise from the difficult terrain of rural households and the limited number of bank branch offices to serve the clientele in rural areas.
In the region, as around the world, women are considered to be highly creditworthy as demonstrated by the high percentage of repayment rate. Thus, microcredit for rural women's groups is viewed as a successful development intervention. The phenomenal growth of women's self-help groups across the region as a social mechanism to deliver credit illustrates the importance placed on microcredit as an instrument of economic empowerment of women. However, the long-term economic viability of the various microenterprises promoted for women is questionable.
The region still lacks a systematic economic analysis of the impact on household welfare of microcredit interventions for microenterprises extended to women's groups among the countries in the region. The long-term sustainability of credit-supported ventures, particularly marketability of the products and women producers' links to profitable markets, are yet to be objectively evaluated. In addition, there are still not enough data to learn how and when women graduate as independent and confident entrepreneurs, without support from either NGOs or government organizations.
Most countries in the region have formal extension structures in place. The training and visit system promoted by the World Bank was tested in the Asian region. Although the training and visit system was described as a success, it was found lacking in reaching women farmers, since the contact farmers identified were male farmers. Adopted from the United States model of the land grant university extension service, the Asian extension system was developed to serve men and women in separate areas of expertise; agriculture for men and home economics for women. Such a gender-segregated approach in delivering extension services to rural households ignored the reality of women's extensive contributions to agricultural production in Asian rural households.
A transplanted segregated approach to agricultural human resource development has resulted in ignoring women as important clientele for agricultural extension delivery. Such an early oversight continues to impair the extension system's effectiveness to serve rural women in agriculture and allied areas. Moreover, home economics units are not funded on equal terms with agriculture extension units. A 1989 FAO assessment documents that in the Asia and the Pacific region the relative allocation of time and resources to different clientele groups by extension organizations shows 3 percent for women farmers and 3 percent for home economics (FAO, 1989). The new actors in rural outreach have been NGOs, which have the flexibility to reach rural households with new knowledge, but may lack the technical expertise and service infrastructure to provide consistent delivery.
In Bangladesh, more than 400 female extension workers operate in the field, but agricultural extension does not effectively reach most rural women involved in agricultural extension. The reasons are: 1) male extension workers are not assigned to contact women; 2) most female workers are city-bred and prefer not to move from the district to towns; and 3) extension workers are not trained to provide extension services on field agricultural crops, horticulture, fisheries, livestock and poultry (Safilos-Rothchild and Mahmud, 1989).
In Malaysia, "although rural women play such an extensive role in the agricultural sector, whether in traditional farming, resettlement schemes or estates, they have remained 'invisible' workers, largely ignored in planning and implementation of agricultural development programmes. Farm women also experience a number of constraints to their rapid assimilation into the mainstream of agricultural and rural development processes. Notable among these are low educational and literacy levels, high mortality rate, low level of participation in science and technology, and socio-cultural values that don't support the advancement of women"(Nozirah Bahari and Lin Mui Kiang, 1991).
Rural women in Asia need access to technology in the areas of agriculture and allied production and the reduction of post-harvest and household drudgery. Although much progress has been made in the development of agricultural technology, gender-differentiated access can be identified in hard technology (tools, implements and farm machinery, both mechanical and manually operated) and soft technology (integrated pest management, hybrid seed production, soil fertility management, dairy processing, poultry breeding, etc.).
In the domain of hard technology, mostly rural men use mechanized farm machinery while women toil with traditional hand tools. For example, in Myanamar women continue to use mostly hand tools while men are more often operators of mechanical tools and farm machinery. As agriculture becomes less dependent on human power, differences in productivity between men and women might be expected to diminish. In fact this is not the case. Men monopolize equipment and modern methods, while women perform manual tasks. Men apply modern methods of cultivation to cash crops while their wives continue to cultivate food crops using traditional methods. Thus, in the course of agricultural development, men's labour productivity tends to increase while women's remains static (U Maung Maung Thwin, 1991). Although women use mechanized tillers and threshers, particularly in the Philippines and China, the relatively greater educational attainment of rural men, among other factors, provides male farmers with a greater advantage in relation to their access to modern hard technology for farming and related activities.
In the post-harvest area, IRRI and the Philippine Rice Research Institute have developed small-scale rice millers that can be operated by women. Similarly, across the region there have been efforts to design farm and post-harvest tools and machinery for women (Carr, 1989; Prasad and Shri Ram, 1990). However, these have not widely reached farm households for several reasons: the weak functional link between research institutions that develop technology and those institutions that disseminate technology to rural households; the lack of understanding of women's technology needs that comes from the perception that women are used to hard work; and the lack of the economic means to invest in farm machinery among the poorer rural households.
In the area of soft agricultural technology, efforts are in progress to train women in integrated pest management in rice and transitional crop systems in Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Viet Nam and Laos. The success of the indigenous dairy industry in India can be attributed to women's dairy stock management supported by science. Aquaculture training for women in the region is also on the increase. Yet these initiatives to increase women's access to frontier soft technology hide the reality that many rural women working in agriculture have a limited knowledge of new science. Although there is an emerging minority of professionals who are aware of the issues of women's needs in the area of technology and the constraints on their access, the view persists that men are the primary clientele for technology adoption and are thus the technology consumers.
In the area of access to domestic technology, rural women have not fared well. The feminist paradigm that placed a higher priority on women's economic empowerment through income generation led the charge in the areas of production technology and credit interventions. However, the spillover effect has been that technology generation for domestic activities has rested with home economists, a female-dominated profession that lacks the resource base and political power to lead a parallel charge. The work by UNICEF and UNIFEM in domestic water access through the installation of handpumps and social forestry programmes to provide domestic fuel has addressed the domestic technology needs of rural women. The orientation of non-conventional energy development led to smokeless stove interventions in India and Nepal.
However, with the increasing rush for urbanization and the growing priority for urban infrastructure development, rural women struggle to obtain basic amenities. A lack of basic services and shortages in water and fuel supply translates into burdens of domestic tasks for rural women. Most rural women struggle under domestic drudgery that could be eliminated by providing them with services and tools at reasonable cost in the local markets. In Nepal, the farmers' profile on the use of technology (especially if based on questions in the Census of Agriculture) is overwhelmingly biased towards men. Women have different priorities, different patterns of land use, and different skills to be encouraged. Their immediate priority is technology to save time in daily household drudgery, which can be expended in agricultural production (Basnet, 1991). Reduction of domestic drudgery with appropriate technology can release women's time for other productive enterprises to increase farm productivity and household income.
The Asia region is vibrant with remarkable economic growth, political and economic structural transition, trade liberalization, accelerated urbanization, internal migration, depletion of ecological resources and loss of biological diversity. These macrochanges have an impact on rural women, but the dimensions and intensity vary by country. Given the vast diversity among the countries, and the complexity of the context, this section will deal with only a few illustrative situations of macrotransitions that affect Asian rural women as regards poverty alleviation and household food security.
In Malaysia, impressive growth is shifting labour force participation away from rural to urban sectors. Female employment in the agricultural sector has declined drastically since 1970, from 61 percent to around 32.5 percent in 1986. This decline is a result of structural changes which are transforming the economic base of the country, gradually shifting it from agriculture to manufacturing and services (Nozirah Bahari and Lin Mui Kiang, 1991). Similarly, as a result of spectacular economic growth, the Republic of Korea has consistently moved women away from agriculture to urban and information technology sectors. Thailand and Indonesia also show a similar trend. Rural women move to non-farm employment as the countries become increasingly urbanized, but their poor educational attainment and lack of advanced skills limit their opportunities in the labour-intensive and poorly paid employment sector.
As part of their progressive efforts towards economic transition, in 1978, the Chinese Government introduced the household contract system which improved the rural economy and expanded the diversified agricultural economy. The household contract system has changed women's work patterns, allowing them to allocate their time between agricultural and household work. Women now play a major role in commodity production through specialized households. Over 50 percent of workers engaged in specialized activities are women, and they generate 55 to 65 percent of the total commodity output value.
At the same time there has been a shift from farming to manufacturing and craft industries in rural areas. Younger women are moving to township enterprises which are owned by either the state or the collective (Guan Minqin, 1987). Croll's (1995) synthesis of village migration studies in China, draws attention to the women left behind who are frequently expected single-handedly to take responsibility for agriculture, sidelines and housework. These combined, often excessive, demands on their labour leave them tired and exhausted. Where older women are left to undertake agriculture, village studies suggest that they are rarely able to maintain previous levels of cultivation, whether measured in terms of land area or types of crops, or to allocate sufficient labour and accrue the technical knowledge and inputs necessary to expand into new cropping and agricultural activities. The village studies also suggest that the declining importance of agriculture and the comparatively low status of women have meant that the feminization of agriculture has led to a mutual and further downgrading of both the status of women and the status of agriculture.
It is also argued that in Asia, within the transitional and open market economic context, the free trade formula and World Trade Organization treaties have had adverse impacts on the economic status of women in agriculture and the informal market with negative consequences for household food security. In the region, as witnessed in India and the Philippines, feminist scholars, NGOs and grassroots-level women's organizations have been mobilized to voice their opposition to the free trade formula and to promote self-sufficiency in food production.
According to Mies (1996): "Apart from making women's contribution to food production invisible, free trade policy also directly destroys the basis of people's subsistence, livelihood and health, particularly of the most vulnerable groups in the South - the women and children." Linked to the free trade controversy are the issues of domination of transnational corporations in the agricultural sector; sanitary and phytosanitary measures and food safety; intellectual property rights; and vanishing biological diversity from the Asian countries. Shiva (1996) and the NGO consultation in South Asia (1996) have made these issues central to their argument of opposition to free trade, and point to the adverse impact on poor farmers, including women, in subsistence and small farm production. These arguments are counter to the Asian governments' development policies and the swelling commercial initiatives to benefit from international trade opportunities. Hence the challenge lies in creating working modalities to serve rural women, in order to ride the waves of change.
Natural resource degradation, which erodes the resource base available for rural women, causes undue hardship. Women who depend on the local forest for collecting forest products for sale and as food and medicine, fodder for their livestock, and fuel are unduly disadvantaged by the degradation of forest and pasture land (Venkateswaran, 1992). As the water resources, both inland and ocean, become increasingly polluted, fisherwomen in Asia are losing their productive occupations as well as food resources (APDC, 1992). Living as marginal farmers in many parts of Asia, rural women and their families face the constant challenge of losing their land and access to common property resources, and thus their way of life, as a result of commercial acquisition of large tracts of land. This changing landscape which takes away their livelihood resources does not always offer viable economic alternatives to change their lifestyle with prosperity. As a result, rural men, along with women, flood the urban centres to make a living in the informal market sector.
Institutional support to women can be 1) government support to rural women; 2) NGO activities for empowering women; and 3) donor agency support to women (both multilateral and bilateral). It is beyond the scope of this chapter to document the breadth and width of the ongoing activities supported by such institutions in Asia, instead it will focus on concerns associated with institutional support and provide an illustrative list of the support extended to rural women in the region.
Most government efforts are extended through the specialized agencies of various technical ministries. Although most Asian countries have either a ministry or a department of women's affairs, the impact of such units on the other technical service government agencies, such as agriculture, livestock and fisheries, in terms of gender integration is minimal. The policy statements on gender-equitable approaches to development and women in development have had a limited impact on mainstreaming women in agriculture and natural resource management policies. This divergence between the national women's policy frameworks and the lack of gender integration policies for sectoral ministries is a major barrier to serving women in agricultural communities and rural areas.
Government efforts funded by external donor agencies have been directed to supporting rural women with special programmes and projects. Most recently, the efforts to assist rural women are being supported by national resources. In part, these efforts are driven by the increasing demand from rural women and by the political reasons of cultivating the rural constituency. In part, the shift could be attributed to donor priorities to support NGO efforts that are targeting women at the village level. The government-funded programmes are channeled through a complex service delivery system which tends to focus on the social concerns and income-generating activities of women. The services are mostly non-integrated and access is cumbersome as a result of complex procedures at the client level that easily confuse illiterate rural women and thus may not serve their needs effectively. In Asia, the agricultural and rural development banks have moved significantly into the microcredit sector that provides capital for women's self-help groups. The phenomenal growth of these groups and their microenterprise initiatives are documented as a regional success story in assisting rural women. However, the impact of credit on household livelihood security and food security needs critical assessment to enable the development community to learn from the credit experience.
In the Asia region, the international donor agencies have been active for three decades in supporting rural women's activities. Hence a comprehensive documentation of their activities is beyond the scope of this chapter. A few examples of significant initiatives are the IFAD and Asian Development Bank-supported production credit for rural women in Nepal (PCRW); the Aga Khan Foundation-supported Rural Support Programme in India and Pakistan; extensive activities of UNIFEM in various countries in the region; ILO initiatives in skill development for Asian rural women; and UNICEF activities in the area of basic services for rural women.
The Asia region has registered a tremendous growth of NGOs that serve rural women in a wide range of activities in areas such as natural resources, subsistence agriculture, seed bank development, community development, income generation, microcredit, political empowerment and social consciousness raising. The wide breadth and diversity of their activities cannot be captured within one document. The NGOs should be classified in categories such as indigenous NGOs and international/cross-national NGOs. Such differences in organization seem to determine leadership quality, local knowledge, the priorities selected and the effectiveness of service delivery. The preponderance of NGOs has created a demand for regulatory measures for accountability and service delivery in some countries of the region.
A few outstanding illustrations of indigenous NGOs that focus on rural women are the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC); the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh; the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) of India; Thailand Royal Programme for North Eastern Women's Development; and the Asian NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development in the Philippines. In the region, the cooperative movement is active and serves women members in rural areas. In the transitional countries of China, Viet Nam and Laos, the grassroots-level organizations that assist rural women function under the patronage of the government. The All-China Women's Federation is a national organization whose principal function is to guard the interests of women and children. It works in close collaboration with the government, utilizing the experience of professional women to help rural women. In Viet Nam and Laos, the Vietnam Women's Union and the Laos Women's Union serve rural women, and both national and donor-funded programmes for rural women are implemented by these organizations.
In Asia, the primary challenges confronting women in development efforts are: achieving gender equity gains for rural women in the agricultural and food sectors, parallel to urban gender gains; creating opportunities for rural women to be the principal agents in poverty eradication; and achieving household food security with gender equity. The diversity in economic development, social transformation and political structures in the region poses a challenge to making recommendations related to rural women and food security in the Asian region. The following recommendations are therefore global in nature and stem from the general trends in the status of rural women in the region. Country-specific recommendations are not attempted.
1 To measure Asian rural women's contributions to agricultural production and rural development, a reliable count of women's work is needed. Such reliability can only be achieved by broadening the definitions of women's work with the contribution of Asian professionals in both agriculture and social science; training Asian professionals in gender-disaggregated database and census data development; and convincing the appropriate national ministries and agencies (including FAO) to address gender-segregated data deficiencies and limitations caused by the data gap on effective utilization of the rural labour force.2 To undertake a systematic synthesis of regional microstudy findings by country in order to provide a more realistic scenario of rural women's roles in household food security and guide policy and programme interventions.
3 To document the role of Asian rural women in biological diversity management and its implications for household food security for policy advice and programme interventions in ecological resource management and household and community food security.
4 To support Asian women's roles in the post-harvest phase and informal food market with appropriate technology and to assist women to develop market linkages to profitable private food industries. Women need skills not only in production but also in negotiation to improve their bargaining capacity to link to the profitable private sector.
5 To support, at a national level, women's initiatives in productive activities in fisheries and aquaculture in order to develop comprehensive household and community food security interventions for the Asia region.
6 To recognize explicitly the roles and special constraints of women-headed and women-supported households and those of girl children in agricultural and related sector policies and household food security programme interventions.
7 To give attention to women's land rights and access to common property resources and forest reserves as they affect household and community food security.
8 To enable women to develop the skills necessary to master the complexity of economic transactions.
9 To undertake a systematic regional economic analysis of the impact on household welfare and household food security of microcredit interventions for microenterprises extended to women's groups.
10 To evaluate objectively the long-term sustainability of credit-supported ventures, particularly the marketability of products, and women producers' links to profitable markets.
11 To take measures, with the joint collaboration of the public and private sectors, to improve women's access to technology (both hard and soft technologies) in production, post-harvest activities and reduction of domestic labour drudgery.
12 To demand innovative interventions that serve rural women in the agricultural sector and rural enterprises when considering the macrotransformations that create a shift in the composition of the agricultural labour force, manifested particularly in the feminization of farming combined with the graying of farming.
13 To assist women through programmes as urbanization pulls or ecological degradation pushes increasing numbers of rural women into the informal sector.
14 To provide mechanisms and procedures that create coordination and collaboration between national women's policy bodies and sectoral technical ministries in order to mainstream women in policies and programmes directed towards agriculture and rural communities.
Asian and Pacific Development Centre (APDC) (1992) Asian and Pacific Women Resource and Action Series: Environment. Kuala Lumpur: APDC.
Agarwal, Bina (1994a) Gender and command over property: an economic analysis of South Asia. New Delhi: Kali for Women.
Agarwal, Bina (19940) A field of one's own: gender and land rights in South Asia. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press.
Basnet, Prabha (1991) "Nepal gender issues in agriculture". In Gender Issues in Agriculture: Papers and Proceedings of the Regional Conference on Gender Issues in Agriculture, 1990 Manila Asian Development Bank and United Nations Development Fund for Women.
Carr, Marilyn (ed.) (1989) Women and the food cycle. London: Intermediate Technology Publications.
Central Research Institute for Food Crops (CRIFC) and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) (1990) Gender analysis in rice farming systems research: does it make a difference? Report of the Women in Rice Farming Systems Workshop. Bagor: Indonesia.
Chen Mart, Manooshi Mitra, Geeta Athreya, Anial Dholakial, Preeta Law and Aruna Rao (1986) Indian women; a study of their role in the dairy movement. New Delhi: Shakti Books.
Croll, Elizabeth (1995) Rural migration in rural development in the evolving market economy. New York: UNDP.
Ehsan, Nuzhat(1963) Women and rural development in Bhutan: a pilot time-allocation survey report. Royal Government of Bhutan: UNDP and Ministry of Agriculture.
FAO(1987) FAO(1989) Women in fisheries. Rome: FAO.
FAO(1989) Agricultural extension approaches: what FAO case studies reveal. A Paper for Global Consultation on Agricultural Extension. Rome: FAO.
Guan Minqin (1987) Women, agricultural systems and technological change: China and the Philippines. Agricultural Change, Rural Women and Organizations: A Policy Dialogue. Workshop Organized by Asian and Pacific Development Centre and All-China Women's Federation. Asian and Pacific Development Kuala Lumpur Centre.
Illo, Jeanne F.I. and Cynthia C. Veneracion (1988) Women and men in rainfed farming systems; case studies in the Bicol Region. Institute of Philippine Culture, Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University.
Islam, Mahamuda (1993) Female-headed households in rural Bangladesh: a survey. In Mencher, Joan P. and Anne Okongwu (eds.). Where did all the men go. Boulder: West View Press.
Madhu, S.R.(1989) Fisher-women of bay of Bengal. NAGA ICALM Quarterly, April 1989: 3-7.
Mencher, Joan P. (1993) Female-headed, female-supported households in India: who are they and what are their survival strategies. In Mencher, Joan P. and Anne Okongwu (eds.) Where did all the men go. Boulder: West View Press.
Mies, Maria (1996) A breakdown in relations, women, food security and trade. Manila: Isis International.
Moreno-Black, Geraldine, Prapimporn Somnasang and Sampong Thamthawan (1994). Women in northeastern Thailand: preservers of botanical diversity. Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor, (2):24.
Nozirah Bahari and Lin Mui Kiang (1991) Malaysia: National Policies on Women and the Implementation of Women's Programs and Projects in the Agricultural Sector. In Gender Issues in Agriculture: Papers and Proceedings of the Regional Conference on Gender Issues in Agriculture, Manila 1990. Manila: Asian Development Bank and United Nations Development Fund for Women.
Poats, Susan, M, Schmink and Anita Spring (1988) Gender issues in farming systems research and extension. Boulder: West View Press.
Prasad, C. and Shri Ram (eds.) (1990) Women in agriculture-technological perspective. New Delhi: International Federation for Women in Agriculture and Indian Council of Agriculture.
Rodda, Annabel (1993) Women and the environment. London: Zed Books.
Safilos-Rothchild, Constantina and Simeen Mahmud (1989) Women's roles in agriculture present trends and potential for growth. Monograph for Agriculture Sector Review. Dhaka: UNDP and UNIFEM.
Seshu, D. and Malavika Dadlani (1989) The role of women in seed management with special reference to rice. IRTP Bulletin (5)1-7.
Shiva, Vandana (1996) Caliber of destruction. Globalization, food security and women's livelihood. Manila: Isis International.
Singh, Andrea Menefe (1993) Defining and targetting female-headed households for development assistance in South Asia. In Mencher, Joan P. and Anne Okongwu (eds.) Where did all the men go. Boulder: West View Press.
United Nations (UN) (1995) The world's women 1995. Trends and statistics. New York: United Nations.
UN/ESCAP (1995) Improving the access of women to formal credit and financial institutions: windows of opportunity. New York: United Nations.
UNDP (1996) Human Development Report 1996. New York: Oxford University Press. UNICEF Empowering women: experiences in East Asia and the Pacific.
University of the Philippines at Los Banos, The International Rice Research Institute and the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (1988) Filipino Women in Rice Farming Systems. Manila.
U Maung Maung Thwin (1991) Myanmar: gender issues in agriculture. In Gender Issues In Agriculture: Papers and Proceedings of the Regional Conference on Gender Issues In Agriculture. Manila: Asian Development Bank and United Nations Development Fund for Women 1990.
Venkateswaran, Sandhya (1992) Living on the edge; women, environment and development. New Delhi: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.
(1996) Report of The South Asian Consultation on Globalization, Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture. New Delhi, India, 1996.
