Sector-specific approaches Household Food Security IFAD is committed to improving the nutritional level of the poorest in developing countries through a household food security strategy that focuses on access to food as the central factor behind improvements in nutrition. According to the strategy, household food security is the capacity of a household to procure a stable and sustainable ‘basket’ of adequate food. Those people who are food secure are no longer destitute and will have the health and strength to strive for their own economic development. The assumption that an increase in household cash income alone will resolve the food and nutrition problem has been called into question. Thus, among the many related issues highlighted in an IFAD workshop organized in 1997 was the choice between strengthening the subsistence aspects of food security and promoting market-oriented activities. Clearly, market volatility can increase household vulnerability. Moreover, increasing and ensuring women’s control over household resources and incomes are means of enhancing household food security. It was therefore stressed that household food security is the entry point for gender analysis in IFAD. Household food security is a defining principle in most IFAD-funded projects in Asia and the Pacific Region. These projects have adopted different approaches for achieving this goal. For example, the Special Assistance Project for Cyclone-affected Rural Households in Bangladesh has been attempting to improve household food security by decreasing the vulnerability of households to natural calamities and losses of livestock. The APPTD has worked to achieve nutrition security through community health programmes. An important issue in household food security that is gaining recognition is the complementarity between male and female contributions. This issue has been emphasized in several projects, including the South-West Anhui Integrated Development Project in China. Income-generating activities and marketing In most countries the employment opportunities for rural women are limited because of a general bias in the labour market, women’s reproductive role, which limits their mobility, and cultural restrictions. IFAD projects have attempted to change this situation. For example, the First Eastern Zone Agricultural Development Project in Bhutan has channelled funds through the National Women’s Association so as to develop initiatives aimed at increasing women’s incomes. Women play an important role in places where trade is still based on traditional practices, but their role diminishes as commercialization increases. A socio-economic assessment of the Ha Giang Development Project for Ethnic Minorities (Vietnam) notes that the contributions of women in horticultural marketing are substantial in this region, but warns that there is a serious risk that, as the (modern) market economy expands, the status of indigenous women may decrease, with the consequent devaluation of their current activities, such as the sale of traditional products at the district Sunday markets. Because of the disruption of traditional trade systems in which women are actively involved, it is possible that the role of men as property-holders in production and as the holders of political power may increase. It has been estimated that the Rural Infrastructure Development Project, also in Bangladesh, has generated 18 000 person-years of employment, of which at least 70% has been among the landless and among rural women. The incomes of at least 8 000 women have been increased through access to area women’s markets, where the women can sell their products, and at least another 3 000 women have found employment through road-maintenance and tree-planting projects. In the Ha Giang Development Project for Ethnic Minorities (Vietnam), a specific income-generation and income-diversification component aims at strengthening processing and handicraft activities among women from various ethnic minorities in the province. Rural finance Table 3 provides details about ongoing projects with gender-related components. The analysis shows that 24 of the 55 ongoing projects have a microfinancing component of which the beneficiaries are overwhelmingly women. Over 60% of the ongoing projects have a microfinancing component of which women are the main target groups. Indeed, microfinancing is a successful and innovative method for enabling women without assets to gain access to credit, and IFAD has long been associated in efforts to promote this method. Through IFAD-funded projects, poor women have been able to demonstrate their ability to save and accumulate as a group, to use these savings to lend money to other groups on terms and conditions that they themselves decide and to borrow from formal credit institutions by relying on their individual and joint liability as a basis for collateral. IFAD-funded projects have been able to demonstrate that a gender-based market distortion related to the non-ownership by women of collateral assets has been the only barrier preventing poor women from obtaining credit and access to other financial services. Among the effects of microfinancing initiatives in terms of gender mainstreaming are the following:
In an interview with IFAD staff, Kusum, one of the women’s self-help group members in the MRCP, said that participation in the group and attendance at group meetings was helping her confront her fears. She is now able to deposit her savings in a bank and is comfortable when talking to the branch manager of the bank. She attends village meetings and even speaks up at village assemblies. "I have become bold", Kusum said, and "I no longer avoid the village centre." The project has helped Kusum build her confidence. For Kusum and many like her, this is empowerment. Many of the women have overcome their shyness and fear through their participation in savings groups. They no longer feel paralysed, alone, or unable to speak up as a result of lack of confidence. Microfinancing has certainly demonstrated a transformative power over gender relations. It has helped increase the mobility, public visibility, political participation and involvement in decision-making of women. It has also promoted their interaction with NGOs and with government and bank officials. Experience in the field has shown that women’s access to credit and savings through women’s groups has contributed significantly to the economic gains reported by women, to the likelihood of an increase in asset holdings among women and to women’s political and legal awareness. In short, microfinancing has played a strong transformative and empowerment role among women in many parts of Asia. The social impact of microfinancing in terms of women’s mobility and their ability to deal with the market and officialdom has been quite positive in South Asia, where the restrictions on women’s mobility and external dealings are traditionally significant. However, a similar microfinancing scheme may not have the same social impact in South-East Asia, where women have a long history of dealings with household economic affairs and the market. In fact, reports on the P4K of Indonesia have pointed out that the South-East Asia credit groups perform a mainly economic function. This is quite understandable since women are not particularly restricted in their movements or in their dealings with the external world. Agriculture, smallholder livestock development and fisheries Most of the crops involved in IFAD-funded projects, such as paddy corps, are essentially controlled by men, though a significant portion of the labour is performed by women. However, several IFAD-funded projects are concentrated on multicropping through shifting cultivation. This farming system, which is largely managed by women, is very often neglected by both extension and technology development initiatives. In the Andhra Pradesh Tribal Development Project in India, attention has been paid to underutilized crops that are grown by women through shifting cultivation methods. A similar approach has also been adopted in the Xieng Khouang Agricultural Development Project in Laos. These efforts have been largely unsuccessful. However, because of the current emphasis on upland and regenerative agriculture, it is expected that crops managed by women will now become a focus. Indeed, in some of the more recently approved projects, such as the Ha Tinh Rural Development Project in Vietnam, women are acknowledged as farmers and managers of ecosystems and have thus been included in key farmer training exercises and as managers for field demonstrations. The negative impact of the financial crisis in several countries of Asia has weighed particularly heavily on women. Women have been hit hard by the recession because they account for a large proportion of migrant labourers and are also generally in the majority as operators in the informal sector. Moreover, women have also suffered appreciably whenever household access to food has declined because of price rises. In response to this crisis and to improve the resilience of the rural poor in the upland and mountainous areas of South and South-East Asia, where neglect and the lack of economic growth have led to desperation and rising violence, IFAD has developed a programme called, Enhanced Partnership for the Future of Asia’s Upland Poor. One important principle in the design of the interventions in this programme is that women should gain control over resources and become involved in household and community decision-making, institution-building and human resource development. The promotion of women is of central importance. Although upland societies and cultures are characterized by more gender equality relative to the lowlands, this is changing rapidly. Experience throughout the world has demonstrated that all people, but especially children, have an improved chance of attaining basic well-being if women obtain more control over resources and household income. In this sense, efforts to increase the economic resilience of the poor can focus largely on enabling women to realize their socio-economic potential more fully. IFAD-funded projects have also attempted to mainstream gender relations through the promotion of the joint ownership of agricultural land titles or of women’s ownership rights. Thus, in the Orissa Tribal Development Project in India and in the APPTD project, the separate ownership by men and women has been recommended among the Chenchu indigenous people. The recently completed Oxbow Lakes Small Fishermen’s Project represents one of the most successful attempts to give women user rights, in this case to fish ponds. Through this project, training and extension support in aquaculture and marketing have also been provided to women. The follow-up project, the Aquaculture Development Project, also involves the leasing of fisheries to women. The Smallholder Livestock Development Project in Bangladesh has played an important part in raising women’s income. The project has, however, been a bit too technocratic. The completion evaluation mission for this project (IFAD 1999f) points out the relative neglect of social development issues vis-à-vis technical, financial and managerial training. Forestry Forestry development and management have not been a part of IFAD-funded projects in the Asia and the Pacific Region. This means that the projects are ignoring an important aspect of the productive labour of women in indigenous communities that rely on forest products for sustenance and livelihoods. A start in changing this situation is represented by the Leasehold Forestry Project in Nepal, which has enabled the poor to acquire access to degraded forest land for the development of fodder and fuel sources to raise family livelihoods. Unfortunately, the initiative has not concentrated on gender equality in membership in the groups. Thus, the women who do most of the related labour become members only if they belong to female-headed households. The APPTD project relies on several innovative methods to add value to the non-timber forest products that indigenous peoples sell in weekly markets. However, this initiative has also failed to adopt a gender-equality perspective. The recently developed Bihar Madhya Pradesh Tribal Development Project in India lays more stress on women’s participation in the forest management committees and generally in the village development committees to be set up through the project. |
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