Everyone readily accepts the idea that having to pursue a career while still needing to raise children and manage household matters presents an obstacle to women, but most never think beyond this to recognise the implications. While women in Nepal are certainly gaining support this hardly gets to the root of the matter.
Annina Lubbock from the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) explains, “The idea behind the project is the fact that 80% of food is created by small farms and a large percent, 45%, of it is done by women.” While women are out on farms, they are cultivating the land and generating income with far less access to needed services and input since women are not involved and don’t have the necessary connection and power at all levels to garner support.
IFAD launched the pilot two years ago in Philippines, Madagascar, Senegal, and WOCAN took on implementing the project in Nepal. The workshop held on January 27 at Kathmandu was organized to present the findings to various agriculture and gender development organisations including Helvetas, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Himalayan Grassroots Women’s Natural Resource Management Association (HIMAWANTI), Aastha and Prena.
Results indicate, previously, women were just working on small farms, but since a large number of able men are working abroad, the women now also manage the land. And across the board there’s been an increase in productivity. Beyond benefiting from their own plots, women have been reaching out to other women in the community.
Besides issues from family and society rural women have to put up with bureaucratic obstacles. Though there are funds allocated for women and for their farms, they are denied access to these provisions as the designated funds are used in other sectors. When going to local leaders the women were often turned away, but instead of being discouraged they discovered methods that work to their advantage-they still take up issues to local heads but instead of going by themselves they go in groups so they can’t be brushed aside as easily. Now, they are recognised figures and have been learning the essentials skills of negotiation and networking.
So though the pilot project has brought many issues to light there is always the need to look to the future. It goes without saying that the number one point to be addressed has to be sustainability. While the initiative brings out the leader in a woman, leadership does not necessarily entail a livelihood. Another long term problem is the question of exactly how much men should be involved.
Another factor that can’t be ignored is that issues at the policy level are abundant. To address this, WOCAN initiated ‘Women’s Leadership Circle’ a few weeks ago that links grassroots women to women who have the ability to influence and/or make policies like social worker and CA member Arzoo Deuba. By doing this, a direct bridge is built so that women’s rural agricultural development can be improved from both ends.
Final Workshop Report is now available in the Programs section of WOCAN`s web-site, under Women`s Leadership https://www.wocan.org/content/category/capacity-building-1.html
Building on the discussions, Jeannette Gurung, Annina Lubbock and Dibya Gurung, concluded by emphasising on three key points on how to best support women’s leadership:
- Re-focus on rural women’s needs and strategise on balancing women’s household work and leadership roles. The current pilot showed that women’s household work (time) still remains the major barrier for their leadership.
- Create spaces or platform to link rural women with professional women (by creating space in decision making forums to share knowledge/ information and connections/networks to resources).
- Establish a multi-donor trust fund (Kick Start Fund) to help women’s groups gain power and skills to tap into existing funds in both Nepal and the Philippines that exist at the decentralised levels, some of which are earmarked for women that are currently either underutilised or misused for other activities. Resources for women’s groups are always insufficient to support the organisational and capacity development, to facilitate women’s abilities to claim such resources, even when these have been created through government and donor policies.
Videos
The Rural Women Leadership Project was implemented in the Philippines in 2010-2011 by AFA and PAKISAMA, in partnership with WOCAN. Leadership stories of 45 women and 15 men were gathered to capture the lessons learned on the women leadership project. This video shows nine of these stories.
WOCAN implemented the Project in Nepal.The following video from Nepal, summarises the Project lessons shared in the Workshop.
Articles
Extract from the feature article on WOCAN Workshop in The Kathmandu Post, 3rd Feb 2012. http://www.ekantipur.com/the-kathmandu-post/2012/02/03/features/rural-women-taking-nepal-forward/231173.html.