Participation is a word heard so frequently in recent years that it is in danger of being debased by overuse. However, the concept remains very important for narrowing equity gaps - between rich and poor, between urban and rural people, men and women and between professionals and artisans. The FAO experience suggests both organization and empowerment of rural people are fundamental to rural poverty alleviation, and that the concept of participation needs to be built in to all projects and programmes which are to be economically, socially and politically sustainable.
A participatory project implies broad, inclusive participation, so it may surprise some to know that there are many cases of such projects where a lack of gender consideration and analysis by planners excludes women by that omission. Even formal cooperative organizations which are generally firmly on the side of the poor and disadvantaged, are notoriously undemocratic about the role of women among members. While not overtly excluding women from membership they do little to facilitate their participation, and women are practically absent on boards of cooperative management or decision-making bodies.
Project plans and policies which are not explicit about women automatically exclude them, because most people think of farmers, foresters or fisherfolk as men. Resources are therefore directed to men, training and support are given to men, and men of course enjoy the benefits, even if women are later co-opted as "partners" to share the work!
Furthermore the database on women is usually derived from data provided by men to male enumerators, neither of whom are familiar with the details of women's work, and whose perceptions are based on commonly held stereotypes of women as dependents of men, people who "don't work." This is especially true in areas such as forestry and forest industries which are overwhelmingly male-dominated at the professional and technical levels. Recent collaboration with forestry departments working on Forestry Master Plans in Asia, confirms that gender analysis in development planning in this sector is "donor driven," and will remain so until concerned officials are convinced by the arguments, internalise principles of gender equity, and acquire the tools to apply these in their daily work.
There is no one formula for achieving gender equity. In each country the socio-cultural context will dictate the limits to breaking boundaries around gender roles, and point the direction of appropriate paths to equity. The important underlying principle however is not one of justice as much as that of mobilizing human resources for efficient and effective development. Many studies show that boosting female incomes benefits all family members considerably more than similar increases in male incomes. To constrain the productivity of one sex therefore, to the point where their work day has lengthened to intolerable levels, where the gap between male and female incomes continues to widen and where girl children and women die because they were not born male, is clearly bad for everyone. In several parts of south Asia, population data shows female numbers declining to as low a proportion as 92 females for every l 00 males. In a society where there is more gender equality, the figures usually show females outnumbering males by around 104 or 105 to 100. Economist Amartya Sen of Harvard University estimates 100 million women are "missing" from demographic data in Asia because of systematic, institutionalised gender discrimination.
