Women and the Economy: The Key Issues

Meena Acharya

INTRODUCTION

Economic and social issues are closely intertwined, one reinforcing the other. For example the key issue of access to land for women is closely linked to the socially determined inheritance rights and religiously ritualized need to give away daughters from one’s own clan to some other clan. Sexuality of women is a social property and an "object" of negotiation for the giving and taking clans. Her access to resources is conditional by her sexuality (see Bennett, 1883 for details on this issue.) Parents prefer to spend on son’s education rather than on that of a daughter because socially sons are responsible for parents’ maintenance in old age while daughters are perceived as temporary guests in natal households (CERID, 1986 and 1986b; CBS, 1996). Women cannot participate in politics on equal footing with men because of both social constraints, lack of mobility and access to resources (Acharya, 1994b). On the other hand women’s progress is limited also because of their limited representation in the political decision making levels. With lack of alternative avenues of employment and access to resources as also because of the social dichotomy of exploitation of their sexuality and severe social standards imposed on their sexual behavior, many women are forced to enter commercial sex work for their survival. Therefore it is rather dangerous to compartmentalize women’s problems into sectoral issues and to view them in isolation. As such, the following analysis is only an attempt to limit the scope of the current paper rather than give a complete account of women’s economic problems in Nepal.

Within this limitation, the major issues related to women in the economic field include their limited access to productive assets- the land and property, credit and modern avenues of knowledge and information; concentration of women in low productivity agriculture and high and increasing work burden without concomitant increase in access to resources, child labor, lack of access to training, technology and education; concen-tration at lower levels jobs, poor working conditions and lack of child care facilities at work places; trade union’s neglect of women’s problems; risk to personal security and sexual harassment in the formal sector and low level of technology, limited market access, low income and progressive loss of proprietorship in informal sector. A problem to be noted is also the declining economic activity rates of urban women, probably signaling the "domesti-cation of women."

Women entrepreneurs face special problems of resources scarcity, low risk taking capacity and marketing access. Moreover, the is a severe dearth of information on women’s employment and earning patterns, problems, grievances and aspirations in the formal sector including tourism and other services. The recorded economic activity rates under reports women’s work and contributions to household survival.

KEY CURRENT ISSUES

Access to Resources

Women’s access to land and property is derived through her marriage relationship. A married woman has no right in her parental property. She gets an equal share in the husband’s property together with her son, if she remains faithful to him and his clan. This is server’s limitation on women’s access to all productive assets.

Marriage becomes the overwhelming factor determining all her life options. This reinforced by all round social norms and legal structures, every thing else is secondary to marriage. Single women, even with many children are not given land in resettlement areas, even if such households may be among the poorest of the poor. They may not claim any tenancy rights. Although many husbands may keep property in the name of wives, such women many not make any transaction in the property without the consent of her husband and sons, etc. This limitation is not applied to husbands and the sons. Households get access to community resources such as forests through household heads who are usually men. Women may have the derived user rights as long as her husband does not abandon her. When a husband brings another wife and leaves her, which is constantly recurring even in the Nepalese social milieu, she looses all access to community property as well. Such processes are hard to capture by data, since no data are collected on polygamy. It is illegal to have more than one wife, but women get no property on divorce and so a access to resources. Two major indicators of such inequality are access to credit and increasing involvement of women in commercial sex work for survival. A detailed discussion of the second symptom is beyond the scope of this paper. Nevertheless it is pertinent to note that lack of alternative avenues of livelihood is one of the major causes why women get into commercial sex work, why parents sell their daughters into dubious marriages and sex bazaar (See New Era, 1997).

Access to Credit

It has been discussed widely that women’s access to credit is limited because both formal and informal credit institutions are geared to funding property owners. All formal credit institutions seek tangible collateral from loan and women are effectively sidelined from institutional credit since women have little access to the inherited property. The village moneylenders are also interested more in earning high interest or acquiring the debtor’s property rather than financing people in need.

Table 1: Borrowings from Formal & Informal Sources

Source: Improving Access of Women to Formal Credit Facilities in Nepal, IIDS, 1992.

Women’s access to institutional credit is further restricted by their confinement to household activities and lower level of awareness and educational attainment. As such they are more prone to fall prey to the exploitative conditions of the village moneylenders than their male counter-parts. Nepal Rural Credit Review Study (NRCRS) by Nepal Rastra Bank in 1991/92 revealed that of the total female headed sample households almost 35 percent had borrowed from one or the other sources compared to 39 percent male headed households. However, among the borrowing female headed households only 15.4 percent had borrowed from institutional sources such as Agricultural Development Bank and Commercial Banks and 84 percent had borrowed from non-institutional sources (Table 1). Access to institutional credit in one of the major stumbling blocks for women entrepreneurs in all sectors including agriculture. Almost 40 percent had borrowed from moneylenders.

Economically Active Work Force:

Sectoral and Occupational Distributions

Accuracy of reporting on labor force participation rates in censuses and the definition of economic activity are some of the major issues, which concern women’s right activists the world over. Many books and reports have focused on them. Several UN agencies have documented them in detail. Accordingly united Nation’s Conference on women (Beijing, 1995) noted in its Platform for Action that "Women contributed to development not only through remunerated work but through a great deal of unremunerated work. On the other hand, women participate in the production of goods and services for the market and household consumption, in agriculture, food production or family enterprises. Though included in the United Nations system of National Accounts and therefore, in international standards for labor statistics, this unremunerated work, particularly that related to agriculture, is often undervalued and under recorded. On the other hand, women also perform the great majority of unremunerated domestic works and community work, such as caring for children and older persons, preparing food for the family, protecting the environment and providing voluntary assistance to unalterable and disadvantaged individuals and groups. This work is often not measured in quantitative terms and is not valued in national accounts. Women’s contribution to development is seriously underestimated, and thus its social recognition is limited. The full visibility of the type, extent and distribution of the unremunerated work will also contribute to a better sharing of responsibilities."

In Nepal, the problem is complicated further by varying definitions of economic activity rates between various censuses. Inspire of these shortcomings of census data a fairly high proportion of women are reported as economically active in Nepal (Table 2). Moreover, sex composition of economically active population shows an increasing preparation of women in labor force.

In the 1991 census tabulation, those who worked for at least three months and those seeking employment were classified as economically active while in 1981 census only those working for eight hours or more were classified as economically active. As such the economically active population of the 1981 census may not be comparable to the economically active population of the 1991. Only about 38 percent of the population were reported as having worked for eight months or more in 1991 (see Niraula, 1994). According to those statistics, gross economic activity rates of 1991 have apparently declined drastically compared to those of 1991 (See Annex Table A.1). That could partially be explained by the demographic changes in favor of children, by the increased number of students, etc. as analyzed by Niraula (1994). But fundamentally it much be a problem of definitions and its interpretation by the enumerators. One notable aspect, from the gender perspective, however, is that while male economic activity rates have declined almost constant. That could be due to a more accurate recording of economic activity rates. It is quite possible that in earlier censuses, all males were recorded as economically active, irrespective or length of work house, age or work status while women were mostly recorded as home makers.

Table 2: Women in Labor Force (15-64 Age Group)

(Percent in Total)

Source: WDR, 1997

Further, women’s economic activity rates are estimated to be much more than what is reported in census data as analyzed below. The daily chores of family life in rural Nepal involve women in labor-intensive farm work and time consuming domestic work to provide fuel, water and food for household member and farm workers. The census definition of economic activity in theory takes into account wage labor, in cash or kind, as well as unpaid family labor. It does not, however, encompass activities such as water and fuel collection, food processing and child care of which are primarily the responsibility of women. Those activities that fall outside the formal economy, but which are essential for the survival of the household, absorb the labor of those women who are reported as "economically inactive" and classified as homemakers and dependents. As per the 1991 census data, more than 36 percent of the female population were reported as home makers and so inactive. A scrutiny of the regional figure clearly indicates a persisting reporting bias in economic activity rates. While the overwhelming majority of Mountain (73.6 percent) and Hill (57.9 percent) women were reported as economically active, only about 27 percent of the Tarai women are thus reported. The Status of Women report series has shown that women in the Tarai were equally active in the economic sphere, albeit invisible within the household production system e.g., in food processing and cooking for farm labor and village sweet shops (see Acharya, 1981), but such activities are not reported as economic.

Another point of concern is the declining economic activity rate of women in urban areas, from 31.5 percent in 1981 to 20.3 percent in 1991. Decline of women’s economic activity with the modernization process has been noted in other countries also (Boserup, 1970). Nepalese economy predominated by households as unit of productions seem to be rapidly replaced by a system which separates households from economic activities limiting them to human reproduction and consumption activities. In this process women may be loosing their economic roles. This is also reflected in declining role of women in household decisions (see Shtri Shakti, 1995)

Women in Agriculture

The Nepalese agriculture is dominated by small-scale subsistence farming. Majority of households (66 percent) have less than on the average. More than 40 percent have less than 0.5 ha. The size of land holding is smaller in Tarai but much less productive in the hills and mountains. Although women contribute substantially to agriculture both in terms of labor input and decision making-women’s access to land is limited due to the patrilineal inheritance system (Acharya, and Bennett, 1981; MOA 1993a, 1993b1993c and 1994). Nevertheless, the hill agriculture is primarily dependent on women due to male migration from the hills, and women operate most of the farms.

Agriculture is becoming progressively feminized. Many women engaged in family farms are still reported as economically not active as discussed above. Nonetheless, even according to census figures, the proportion of female labor force in agriculture has increased between 1971 and 1991. In 1971, women constituted 30.4 percent of the agricultural labor force. That increased to 36.4 percent in 1981 and to 45 percent in 1991 (Annex Table A.2). Although female employment is increasing in the non-agriculture sector, comparatively a larger proportion of agricultural labor force are women. In 1981, more than 96 percent of the economically active women were involved in agriculture and forestry. In 1991 this percentage has come down to 90 percent. Concomitantly, there has been an increase in the proportion of economically active population engaged in the leading sources of employment for both men and women. The next largest group of women is in trade sector. Manufacturing occupies only a remote third position in employment generation for men and women.

Occupationally, even in urban areas a substantial proportion of women are concentrated in the category of farm, forestry and fishery workers although the share of the non-agricultural sector in total employment has shown a substantial increase in 1991 (Annex Table A.3) In the non-agricultural sector, women are mainly engaged in services, sales and as labors in manufacturing, construction, transportation, communications and others. Compared to 1981, a larger proportion of economically active women seem to have entered the group of professional and technical workers. Nevertheless, compared to 1981 now comprise lesser proportion of total number of professional and technical workers-indicating relatively lower access of women to education and knowledge (see Acharya, 1994a).

Employment in the Organized Manufacturing

An increasing number of women are entering the work force in the formal manufacturing sector because of economic need. However, they are mainly concentrated in low-skill, menial and repetitive jobs and in the lower echelons of the industrial hierarchy in what is virtually an extension of their household activities. Lack of education, training opportunities, employer biases and limited mobility due to social responsibilities combined to keep them at lower echelons of industrial hierarchy.

In 1976/77, women had constituted 11.2 percent of the total labor force in manufacturing industries. That proportion went up to 17 percent in 1986/89 and to 23.0 percent in1990/91 but has slightly declined since then. The decline is notable in all classified industries with a few exceptions (Annex Table A.4).

According to a survey (Rana and Shah, 1987) in 1987, women’s employment in industries in the organized sector depended less on type of industry than on its location, size of investment and degree of mechanization. More women workers were employed in manufacturing in the Hill region than the Terai. Female employment was concentrated in those industries where the fixed capital investment was the lowest. That meant that the majority of female workers received low pay.

The majority of women in the formal sector worked as semi-skilled and unskilled workers. In virtually all food, drink, tobacco and match industries female workers were mainly concentrated in packing the finished product and in related processes (Shrestha, 1983). The large-scale textile factories are no exception. For example, at the Hetauda Textile Factory, with 50 percent women in the work force, there were very few women performing supervisory functions and none at all at the managerial level (Shrestha, 1990). The concentration of women in low-paid, unskilled jobs may be attributed to low literacy, low skill levels and also to social bias regarding the appropriateness of employing female workers for certain jobs but not others.

As per 1991 census 62 percent of female manufacturing labor force were married and 27 percent literate of which 6 percent had reached secondary education (8-10 classes) and only 4 percent had finished secondary and higher education. A survey (Basnet, 1991) of 66 women engaged in nine industrial establishments located in the Kathmandu Valley indicated that almost 71 percent of women employees in these industries worked because of poverty. Almost 29 percent had no other breadwinners in their household. About 52 percent of women engaged in such industries were illiterate, about 15 percent had completed school and about 11 percent had college education. About 64 percent were married or widowed and 29 percent were unmarried. More than 60 percent were between 20 and 34 years of age. About 12 percent laborers in 10-14 age group.

Working Conditions

Only scattered information is available on the working conditions in the industrial establishments. According to Basnet (1991), only about 55 percent of women workers had permanent jobs, about 17 percent were temporary employees and 29 percent were casual laborers. Only 20 percent had been promoted to higher levels and about 29 percent believed that they were getting as much pay as male employees. They worked under difficult physical conditions and more than one-third of those interviewed said they had experienced some work related health problems. Only about 33 percent of them received some facilities additional to wages. Less than one-fifth women laborers (14 percent) were trade union members while 17 percent were aware about trade unions. Other studies on working conditions depict no better situation (for examples see Ojha, 1984; Joshi, 1985; and Thacker, 1992). Even in the carpet industry, where it is a highly skilled job, women are still treated as unskilled and intensely exploited by the factory owners (Thacker, 1992). Additionally, as international competition in such industries is very keen, wages are kept low.

According to Thacker (1992) the carpet industry in the Kathmandu Valley had 66 percent women workers. Nearly 97.8 percent of these women were piece rate workers while only 14 percent of men were so. These women were overwhelmingly young (below 22 years of age) illiterate and worked for reasons of poverty. Cheating by the employers on payments of salary and wages was rampant. Women benefited little from industries, as men progressively took the mechanized jobs.

Women in the Tourism and Related Sectors

Women are believed to be engaged in large numbers in tourism (hotels, airlines and travel agencies) and other tourist related services such as restaurants, carpets and handicrafts manufacturing. As per the sectoral composition of labor force, after agriculture, commerce manufacturing and personal and community services have substantial proportion of female employees.

But very little information is available on women in tourist sector (hotels, airline travel and trekking agencies) per se. Nepal Rastra Bank study of the tourist sector (completed in January-May, 1988 and published in 1989) showed that 20.6 percent of the employees in tourist and related industries were women. Carpet had 66.4 percent female employees. Distribution of female employees as per the level of jobs was more of less even in tourist industry while in the related industries, they were concentrated at basic levels (Table 3). Relatively few women seemed to be employed in garments, probably because it was overwhelmingly dominated by emigrant labor.

Table 3: Women in Tourism and Related Industries (1988)

 Source: NRB, 1989, pp. 293-302. * Does not include handicraft.

Self -employment and the informal Sector

Workers

The overwhelming majority of workers are still self-employed or own account workers while less than one percent are employers. The percentage of self-employed workers, which remained more or less constant at about 86 percent between 1971 and 1981, has decreased to 75 percent in 1991 (Annex Table A.5). Males mainly account for that decrease. In other words, larger proportions of women are self-employed than men. There is a slow but perceptible change taking place in the employment status of the population. The proportions of both male and female employees in the populations are increasing while those of the self-employed or unpaid family worker are decreasing. This may signify a positive or negative trend, depending on whether those who move out of the self-employment are getting better jobs or just moving out because of improvements caused by flooding of the market by factory produced goods. The flood of the plastic goods in the market for example, has ruined many traditional craft workers.

Most male and female unpaid family workers are below 20 years of age. The proportion of men and women working as unpaid family workers decreases with increase in age. In the higher age groups the percentage of the male; unpaid family worker is negligible. Furthermore, with an increase in age the percentage of male employers expands. That is also true of female employers although the increase is less significant. It should, however, be noted that most women portrayed as self-employed are actually working as unpaid family workers. Women working in household farms or other house-hold enterprises would not be perceived as unpaid family workers and reported so.

Table 4: Selected Indicators of Employment Status.

In percent

Source: NLSS, 1996, 00. 42-48

 NLSS (1996) indicated that lesser proportion of women reported unem-ployed than men and than women revived lower wages than men (Table 4). Overwhelming majority of those employed are self employed, but propor-tionately more women are self employed than men and more women work in agriculture than men both in wage and non-wage employment.

Majority of the self-employed and unpaid family workers, both men and women are in agriculture. Nevertheless, there are numerous small, unregis-tered production entities engaged in the production of variety of products both for home consumption as well as for local sales and a significant proportion of manufacturing in Nepal takes place within the household. Also, the production of a few selected export products such as carpets is widely diffused. Their operations are generally restricted to off-farm hours and hence employment is only part-time. Units are widely scattered, but predominately located in the Hills and Mountains, along with major clusters in urban areas. Very few women could earn more than rupees 2,000 per month from such activities, even from full-time employment (UNIDO, 1988).

Women Entrepreneurs and Their Problems

Since the social milieu restricts women’s role within the household they are mostly involved in home base industries such as, food processing, garments hosiery and crafts. However, these industries are either progres-sively dying due to competition from imported products or being replaced by organized formal units. On the one hand, the displacement of traditional crafts by light industry is causing the replacement of female workers by male laborers (Rana and Shah, 1989). On the other, women are being converted into wage laborers in such specialized sectors as the carpet industry. Women have been functioning as managers, supervisors, entrepre-neurs, and even skilled worker in home based craft enterprises. As industrial activities become increasingly externalized, however, both male as well as female workers lose control over the production process and become trans-formed into wage labor. In this process, women are affected more since newly emerging organized industries need not only more capital but also lay stress on more educated and mobile laborers. The managerial class in these industries, which is dominated by the indo-Aryan and westernized concep-tions of gender specialization, reinforce their own biases in hiring and firing. Further a few women who remain proprietors face serve problems of lack of capital, access to institutional credit, lack of access to marketing network, marketing information, appropriate business training and education. Other constraints include limited access to modern management methods and technology; and high cost of production leading to uncompetitive pricing. They also lack self-confidence and risk taking and staying capacity as they have access to very little capital and may face numerous family problems in their enterprise.

Child Laborers

With the resource crunch in households, girl are forced to work earlier than boys. As per 1991 population census, there are about 532,000 economically active children aged 10-14 years (CBS, 1995). Relatively a much higher pro-portions of this age group of girl children are economically active (28.0 %) compared to male children (18.1). One study (Cheery, 1996) has reclassified the economically inactive children further into those in school and not in school and concluded that those not in school are also economi-cally active. This classification puts boys’ and girls’ economic activity rates at 25.5 and 49.4 percent respectively. Girls in the poorer households have much heavier workload than boys of the similar age group (Annex Table A.6)

Children work mainly in agricultural farms as most of the populations do. But proportionately there are more child laborers in certain industries, e.g., carpets, tea estates, brick factories, stone quarries and the service sectors, particularly hotels, tea shops and restaurants, domestic servants and porters. Young girls are recruited into forced prostitution on a wide scale. The working conditions in such in duration are often appalling (see Sattaur, 1993; and Pradhan, 1993). Poverty, family disruption, parental illiteracy, agrarian relations forcing families into bonded laborers, are some of the major causes of child labor. Legislation against child laborers, though adequate is rarely enforced. Child laborers face long hours of work in unheal-thy environment, low wages and hazardous conditions of work. This leads to various diseases among child laborers and denies them educational opportunities. Employers do not devote any resource to improve the situation of child laborers (CWIN, 1995).

The girl labor rates surpass the boy labor rates in all 75 districts. For each 100 working boys there are 219 girls in the Hills and 177 girls in the Tarai are working. The gender imbalance ratio is higher in the Western Hill and Mountain regions, than in other parts of the country.

The main issue is how to improve the situation of child laborers and increase their access to education and better future opportunities without stopping their sources of income. Many families are too poor to support their own children. Others have abandoned them. A third group of child workers, is orphaned with no relatives to care for them.

DEVELOPMENT EXPERIENCE (1980-1995)

Plans and Programs

At the National level, the government policies have tried to women’s problems in various ways. The government had emphasized women’s invol-vement in all programs and projects, recognized legal impediment to their economic empowerment and enunciated special programs for meeting their needs already in the Sixth Five year Plan (1981-1985). The Seventh Plan expanded on these themes. The Eighth Five year Plan, (NPC/HMG, 1992) declared, "the Government is committed to equal and meaningful participa-tion of women in development." Nevertheless, at the program level there was no difference in the three plans (Table 5). All three plans, with slight varia-tions in emphasis, focused on small-scale income generation, education and training, and MCH and family planning programs for women. Required legal reforms were to be implemented to facilitate women’s participation in deve-lopment. The Eighth Plan, in particular, mentioned about increasing women’s representation at decision making levels in the government, non government and semi government sectors and a monitoring system for recording gender discrimination at work. A suitable organizational structure for coordination and monitoring of activities relating to women was also envisaged.

Achievements and Problems

It has been a learning process as elsewhere with few achievements and numerous problems. In the Eighth Plan the focus was on mainstreaming. A number of positive developments have taken place during the last 25 years since 1980. Notable achievements (1980-1995) include:

Major problems, now, relate to implementation. The experience dealing with women’s issues in the past two decades indicate that exclusive focus on women as an analytical category and efforts to cater to their practical needs for food, shelter, basic education and primary health are not sufficient for building an equal opportunity society for women and men.

Moreover, in the absence of necessary structural and attitudinal changes, the prospects of her extensive involvement in programs and projects itself becomes constrained. This will effect the efficiency aspect as well. This is very evident in Nepal.

From a review of developmental efforts in Nepal, Acharya (1997) writes,

"Nepal has reached a stage on women’s issues where the implementation aspects are most crucial. Right policy enunciation has been made at the macro level, but there are no mechanisms to implement them either at the macro, mesa or micro levels. Women have gained somewhat in terms of educational and health status and political awareness, but gender difference in thermos of access to resources and positions of power have changes little, inspire of much rhetoric. Attitudinal changes required for effective implemen-tation of policies and programs ion women have been rather slow to materialize . . . The social attitude towards women has not changed much either. The family is still seen as the primary responsibility of women and good marriage and mother hood as the "ultimate goals" for them. This has effected various educational development and credit programs adversely. Girls are withdrawn from schools and skill development programs, before they complete the courses because they have to be married off, credit can not be granted to the unmarried women because they shift their residence on marriage, they must start motherhood early because otherwise they will be stigmatized socially, they must start motherhood early because otherwise they will be stigmatized socially, they must bear constant domestic violence because that is the only shelter they have, etc.

Table 5. Development Plans on Women (1980/81-1995/96)

Source: Respective Five-Year Plans.

Human Development Report (1996) concluded that such constraints have rather been universal. It clearly states that, in spite of much progress in many developing countries in the preceding five decades, everywhere the structure and quality of growth has not been satisfactory. It has been a "jobless, ruthless, rootless, voiceless and featureless growth." It has been very inequitable to women. In the same vein the Beijing Platform Action stated that " most of the goals set out in the Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women have not been achieved. Barriers to women’s empowerment remain despite the efforts of government as well as NGOs and women and men everywhere." Particularly highlighted were: the persistent and increasing burden of poverty of women, inadequacies and inequality in access to education and training, health care and related services, violence against women, unequal access to power and decision making roles, inequalities in economic structures and policies and access to resources, biaseness in the mass media and the communication system and insufficient mechanism at all levels to promote women’s interest and advancement.

Consequently, the task set by the United Nations for the fourth decade, is not only to increase women’s participation in development par se. But to empower them in such a way that, they can bring about a fundamental change in those socio-economic structures, institutions and attitudes that reinforce or/and introduce new forms of gender inequities. His Majesty’s Government of Nepal has set it self a triple task of mainstreaming, eliminating gender inequality and empowering women and the Ministry of women and Social Welfare has prepared a detailed Action Plan for implementing the Beijing Platform for Action.

Specific Problems in Nepal among other things include:

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Conceptually, Nepal has taken note of these limitations and committed itself to the following plan of action in UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.

An Action Plan recommended recently by the MWSW for implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action expands upon the above themes relating them to the 12 objectives laid down in the Platform, pinning down the responsibilities for each action required.

The Ninth Plan Approach Paper sets triple objectives of mainstreaming, eliminating gender inequality and empowering women along the lines proposed by the Beijing Platform for Action. Mainstreaming section emphasizes the formulation of clearly defined policies, targets and programs are national and regional levels, improvement in information to reflect women’s contributions to GDP, further institutional development and creation of a monitoring and evaluation mechanism. Elimination of Gender Inequality includes reform of discriminatory laws, affirmative action in favor of women specific measures to eliminate violence against women, and information campaign for gender equality. Empowerment includes provisions for mandatory representation of women in policy formulation, ensuring their access to credit and land, meeting their health needs as women, education, training and technology, etc. Its details are still under preparation.

A PLATFORM FOR ACTION

Nepal’s development strategy in near future is expected to focus on broad based growth with emphasis on social and rural physical infrastructure. Given severe problems in implementation and general insensitivity of the HMG’s implementing machinery to gender issues and lack of capability of WID institutions in general, the approach to gender should be multifaceted, including policies, capacity building and reorientation of sectoral programs and projects in gender perspective. The policies should focus on reform of the discriminatory laws and regulations, gender sensitization of the government and non-government implementing machinery, increasing the scope of sectoral objectives and programs related to women and funding gender sensitization institutional network, education and employment.

Policies

Legal Reform: Although legal reforms for equal rights in paternal property and increase in women’s representation at higher political and administrative levels, are on the priority list of Nepalese women, given general resistance to this issue, policy dialogue with the government could focus on legal reforms for creating an equal opportunity society as targeted in the 9^th Plan Approach Paper. Particularly, equal land rights in the resettlement areas and equal access to public resources such as community forestry could be included in the current agenda.

Gender Sensitization: A policy decision on gender sensitization of the police and government machinery at all levels must be taken consciously and implemented vigorously. Gender sensitization is necessary at all political and administrate levels because no matter what manuals are provided, translation of programs into actions depends primary on human attitude to the issue at hand. Since gender bias is so ingrained in the social psyche and social behavior, it is necessary to sensitize the people on various and invisible indicators of gender biases. It has to be an on-going process because of the constant turnover of personnel at the district level and new recruits to the political leadership.

Women in Government Administration: Recruitment of more women in responsible positions must be a policy. The recent amendments to the Civil Service Act may be expected to facilities this process. Regularization of the WDD office and its staff into the government services needs immediate attention. Vacancy in district level positions of WDOs and moral of the PCRW staff is one of the constrains in micro-credit. Regularization of PCRW structure is a must for expansion of women’s credits programs.

Overcoming Marginality: Marginality of women’s components is a major issue in most sectoral programs. Real equal access to education, training and employment opportunities in all programs and projects should be ensured the gender both through policies and project intervention strategies.

Specific Projects: The government and the donors should continue to find specific projects for women to enable women to overcome the gender inequity entrenched in the social structure and social psyche.

Capacity Building

Capacity building may be facilitated by consciously provisioning for gender sensitization programs, in all projects for capacity building of relevant agencies. Capacity building efforts should encompass all levels off government administration and political institutions such as DDCs and VDCs. These should also include NGOs and the private sector.

Centrel Level

a) The Women’s Ministry and Women’s Divisions or cells in sectoral Ministries/Departments: These institutions lack staff and resources for fulfilling their mandates effectively as mentioned above. Sectoral Ministries also lack gender expertise to mainstream gender concerns. Resources should be allocated for building institutional capabilities for gender analysis within Women’s Ministry or other relevant Ministries and institutions.

b) Development of a regular Monitoring and Evaluation Mechanism and Procedures: Monitoring is another big loophole in all programs. A monitoring mechanism needs to be developed as an integral part of the monitoring process in the Planning Commission. The Ministry of Women should be assisted in developing its own mechanisms to monitor and evaluate development programs from women’s perspective. It should be helped to develop indicators for measuring the actual impact of various programs on women’s social status and the process of empowerment. NPC should such as agriculture and forestry, education and health should be assisted specifically in capacity building for gender planning and monitoring.

c) Development of a Training Infrastructure for Gender Sensitization: Gender sensitization is a must for all staff (male and female) in the Women’s Ministry and Women’s Divisions and cells in various ministries as also the district and grass roots level workers. Various training institutions within and outside the government structures, e.g. Rural Training Academy, Staff College and Women’s Training Centers (WTC), Universities and colleges and private sector/NGO training institutions, need resources and expert input in designing and integrating gender sensitization materials in their various courses and trainings as also developing new packages. Particularly WTCs, the Rural Training Academy and Staff College could be assisted in regularizing gender training in their own training calendars on a large scale. A review of all their training materials and integration of gender perspective in such training can help to gender sensitize the development programs on large scale.

d) The problems of implementation of policies and management of facilities are especially severe in education and health. Decentralization of decision making should be a priority area in both these sectors. This has been recommended by numerous reports and studies (e.g., IIDS , 1994, DFID, 1997).But the process of decentralization has some how bypassed these sectors. For example, School Management Committees (SMCs) should be left free of political intervention, and given total power over school management including a role in pay scales, incentives, hiring and firing of the teachers. SMCs menders should be parents who send their children to particular schools rather than partisan politicians. Certain proportion of SMC members should be constituted by mothers. Similarly, selected mothers or others or other’s groups in the village should be represented overwhelmingly in Sub-Health Post Management Boards. This Management Board should be given complete power over the SHP management including a role in pay scales, hiring and firing of staff.

e) The NGO movement in Nepal is nascent and much maligned (Acharaya, 1997b). But a few of them have emerged quite well at the national level as development NGOs delivering services to the population. A large number of NGOs especially at district and regional levels, however, lack expertise and have little capacity for delivery of services. These should be assisted selectively on the basis of their potentiality and not on the basis of political cronyism. The role of KMTNC in the development of eco-toursim and a few NGOs in social mobilization and credit delivery in Micro-credit Project may be considered a success. But except for KMTNC, financial viability seems problems for most NGOs.

According to MCPW’s experience NGOS growing out of community based organizations (CBOs) or Cooperative Federations growing from below could be better alternative channels for service delivery and credit. Social Mobilization becomes more effective if initiated by rather than government agencies, as (CBO’s) capacity in social mobilization is yet to be tested.

Women’s NGOs have been more successful in advocacy and training rather than delivery of services per se. Their efforts for networking for advocacy and capacity building for gender sensitization and training could also be supported through donor funding.

District Level

DDCs, VDCs and the district level development administration. The district level political bodies and the line agencies have no gender expertise for mainstreaming the gender concerns. With the new Decentralization Act (1997) all development programs and projects are supposed to originate from the grass roots. As such gender expertise required from VDC to national levels. The government should initiate appropriate measures for setting and regularizing a mechanism for gender sensitization of the planning and implementation process from village to the national levels. A dialogue with donors will be useful in designing interventions for capacity building. Particularly, UNDP’s Participatory District Development Program (PDDP) needs redesigning for gender sensitive (see Sahavagi, 1997 for details on this issue).

A second alternative, could be restructuring of the current Women Development Office operating under MLD at the district level to function as a coordination office at the district level. When PCRW was introduced in 1982, there were no large scale credit or community development programs directed to women in the country. Currently there are regional banks providing credit primarily to women. In addition thousands of NGO’s and INGOs are operating their own small scale saving and credit programs. Nepal Rastra Bank funded Micro Credit Program has introduced a new model for providing credit to women directly through NGOs.

The PCRW model is also found to be very expensive model of credit delivery with 66 percent subsidy component. Some redesigning seems to be a must. The women Development Section at the districts therefore could be slowly divested of their direct group organization and credit preparation functions. These functions should be transfer to the banks themselves or to other financial intermediates such as NGOs or cooperatives, which are growing from below. The Women Development Development Section should be assigned the functional responsibility of monitoring and supervising incorporation of women’s concerns in all sectoral district and VDC level programs, organizing and facilitating gender training for politicians, administrations and field staff at VDC/DDC levels, supervising and monitoring Micro Credit Program implemented through NGOs and reporting the progress on gender concerns to the Planning Commission and the Ministry of Women and Social Affairs required. This unit could be placed under Women’s Ministry.

Project Interventions

a) The government along with policy initiative, capacity building, and mainstreaming, should also broaden the scope of stand-alone projects for women in fields where women and children predominate - for example specific education and skill development or in the sector.

b) It is necessary to widen the scope and depth of mainstreaming by providing women, employment opportunities in non-traditional sectors such as paper manufacturing, software development, organized trading, etc. In Nepal even the so called traditional sectors such as garment making is monopolized by emigrant male labor. Sewing and knitting training have been widespread but not adequately linked to work in organize garment manufacturing industries.

Also targeting of training to particular groups will increase the efficiency of such training - for example sewing to the tailor cast and shoe making to cobblers. who are loosing jobs on a large scale due to availability of mass product garments and shoes, which are primarily imported. Minimum educational requirements and lack of information are a big hurdle to the respective service caste for getting into such trainings.

Designing industry has been largely male dominated. A study could be commissioned under assistance to CTEVE to explore possibilities of non- traditional sector employment for women.

Social Mobilization and Credit

Social mobilization, group formal education and credit are felt to be powerful intervention strategies for reaching women effectively and for their empowerment across all sectoral programs. HMG should continue its emphasis on the above aspects where relevant. Group mechanism does provide a basic commendation and scope for women’s development and subsequent empowerment. Women who are originally shy in public and imbued with little self-confidence to express their opinions in the public and may show considerable leadership capacities ultimately.

Savings and credit as an initial inducement for group formation serves an useful purpose in bringing women together. It also could help women to raise household living standard to some extent and to meet emergency needs from group fund at reasonable interest rate. It empowers women to the extent that household menders and she herself feel that she is contributing to the maintenance of the household. This recognition by herself, her immediate family menders and the local community seems to be the most valued aspect of these small savings/credit and income generation programs. Women who from groups are also able ultimately to influence some community action in favor of women, e.g., banning alcohol misuse in the villages. Ownership of a collective element for group sustainability.

However, group formation and its eventual sustainability is a long drawn out process. Further, for empowerment, improvement in gender relations must be an integral part of all social mobilization programs including credit. Field observation reveals that often women are aware of the oppressive gender relationship in their own community but are helpless to do anything about it. When programs sidetrack such problems women become apathetic to the programs (see Sahvagi, 1997). Non-formal literacy classes must also form an integral part of group mobilization process both in the rural and urban areas. Education is a necessary element in empowerment of women.

Sectoral Issues and Future Strategies

Mainstreaming should be the primary strategy for catering to the major needs of women at the sectoral levels. It needs to be direct to creating maximum access to sources of employment, credit technology educational and health facilities. At operational level, emerging gender issues may be summarized as a) ensuring adequate analysis of all programs and projects with a gender perspective (b) gender sensitization of the implementation mechanism and machinery; (c) ensuring adequacy of measures initiated to ensure gender in project benefits; and (d) development of monitoring indicators and mechanisms to monitor and evaluate project impact on women in terms of not only her participation but her empowerment a well. A few sectors are discussed below specifically as example.

Agriculture: The agricultural sector employs the largest proportion of women. Much of Nepal’s agriculture, specially in the hills, depends on women. But women still form, less than 20 percent of trainees in agricultural training programs. Inspire of much rhetoric, little efforts and resources have been spent so far improving efficiency are concentrated precisely in these operations. Women’s programs and administrative rules and regulations in agriculture. Very few women are represented at decision making levels. Finally, lack of access to and other resources severely limit women’s choice in the agricultural decision making.

HMG’s agriculture programs and projects should target as the major actors in agriculture and not as the major participants. The Agricultural Perspective Plan (APP) explicitly seeks to ensure women’s participation in agricultural program through staffing and attitudinal changes in the regular facilities rather than having separate facilities for them. APP expects to benefit women from high growth of dairy production, rapid growth in high-value crop and specific efforts to ensure women’s participation in research, extension, credit and oversight, and access to fertilizer and irrigation. MOA should pay specific attention to the following recommen-dations in its sectoral programs and projects:

Education and Training: The issues on education and training include social constraints on girl’s schooling and rural/urban, regional and inter-group gaps in female education levels; heavy workload of girls, specifically for above primary age group and low quality of public school teaching, (it effects girls specially because more girls are likely to go to public schools) rigidity of formal schooling hours; high cost of girl’s education; lack of innovation in all out of school training directed to women lack of need assessment and marketing research and lack of gender sensitivity in training materials, inappropriate methodology and pattern of training.

Programs and projects in the education sector pay specific attention to gender equity issues and ensure marketability of skills taught. Specific strategies for the education sector should include.

Particularly, with focus on human development, a series of projects are in the offing with special focus on teacher’s training both at primary and secondary levels on a large scale, gender sensitization should be included in all training programs even if the subjects are science or mathematics. This will help to gender sensitize the future generation on a large scale. Otherwise it is felt that we are bringing generation of gender biased youngsters, and the task of debrain-washing them will never end.

Training’s in skill development should match the nature of the industry feasible in the area, For example, training in computer skill can be useful only if concentrated in and around urban areas, while sewing, knitting and textile making have to be concentrated in batches to particular areas, where possibility of employment in such areas are high. Only then women can use them for income generation. An example in point is the knitting industry, which is generating good income for women in and around Kathamndu and Pokhara valleys, while in the Far-West it has been a total failure.

Tourism and Other Employment: Technological innovations are required to assist entrepreneurial women in reduction of production cost, product specialization and exploration of market niche. Specifically in the tourism sector which has large scale female participation, programs and projects should incorporate following strategy on gender.

A separate program for women entrepreneurship development should be initiated. A project for the promotion of women entrepreneurs could be considered in this context. The present skill development training provided by different organizations are traditional and lack management and network-ing components. To start with a national scale study is necessary to dig out the psychological, social and technical problems that the women face in business management and recommend solutions. Few organizations in the non-government sectors such as Women Entrepreneur’s Association of Nepal (WEAN). Association for Craft Producers (ACP), Janakpur Women’s Development Centre (JWDC) are working with women entrepreneurs. They operate on a very limited scale.

Major credit programs should devise mechanisms to facilitate access of organizations such as WEAN and ACP in Kathmandu. Association of Cottage and small Industries in Nepalgunj and JWDC in Janakpur to credit through NRB. Such associations could also be assisted in market niche exploration and cost redaction through technical assistance.

Continuation of women’s involvement in management of tourist faci-lities as planned under eco-tourism component of the II Tourism Develop-ment Project.

Ensure 50-50 participation of women and men in all related training’s because tourism sector employs women on a large scale, but they are concentrated mainly in traditional jobs such as, clerks and receptions. Few women have reached at the higher level of the organizational hierarchy.

Establish a fund for rehabilitation of the commercial sex workers and public education packages to prevent trafficking, drug use, alcoholism and spread of STDS and AIDS in tourist areas. This should also ensure adequate credit access to women in the tourism sector expanding their business.

Rural Infrastructure: Rural infrastructure includes rural roads, irrigation facilities, rural energy sources and development of rural markets. HMG’s near future strategy in Nepal is likely to focus on rural infrastructure building for boosting a broad based agricultural development. But so far, specific attention to women’s concerns in such projects has been minimal. Its future strategy needs.

References Cited

ANNEX: Tables

Table A.1. Economic Participation Rates by Sex and Age Group

Source: Population Monograph, CBS, 1995

Table A.2. Distribution and Composition of labor Force by Industry

(10 Years and above)

 Source: Acharya 1994

Table A.3: Occupational Distribution by Residence and Sex

(in percent)

 Source: Population Monograph, CBS, 1995

Note: M=Male, F=Female

Table A.4 Structure of Female Employment-Manufacturing Survey
(1986/87, 1990/91 and 1993/94)

Source: Population Census: 1971, 1981 and 1991, CBS

A.5: Employment Status of Economically Active Population

(In percent)

Source: Population Census: 1971, 1981 and 1991, CBS.

Table A 6: Hours of Work by Sex and Residence

Source: Nepal Rastra Bank, 1988,P-356-360.