Context
A grasp of the local context within which the HLFFDP operates is crucial to an understanding of attitudes and how they may change within the organizations responsible for project implementation. The experience of ‘engendering’ the project is a product of the specific time and place in which it occurred, as well as a product of the actors that influenced it as it evolved. A basic assumption that underlies this analysis is that dominant values, beliefs and norms about hierarchies, power and gender relations are, to a significant degree, contingent upon the ‘national’ cultures related to caste and hierarchy, gender and professionalism that provide the dominant references of individuals whose actions affect the social and work environments of organizations. In this light, a brief discussion of these topics is included here as background.
Historically, hierarchy is deeply ingrained in the cultures of South Asia, in part due to prevalence of a highly stratified caste system that originated in India. This culture is predominant in Nepal today, expressed more as a class distinction rather than a religious one and affecting the behaviours of the elites and those who emulate them in order to gain power and prestige. This culture is greatly influenced by high-caste values and interpersonal styles that are based on a hierarchical system and attitudes that disadvantage persons of low caste and ethnic backgrounds. In addition, the organization is often considered an extension of the family, which is usually highly hierarchical, with members working as instructed by a man who is the head-of-household.
A principal characteristic of the Nepalese people and many other South Asians is their strong identification with groups and the social roles they play within these groups. Whether through kinship, or class and caste, people are imbedded within a complex social structure that, to a large extent, determines their self-identity. Because of this close identification with those similar to oneself, many people may find it hard to understand the perspective of the ‘other’, who is strange and different, and to work with the ‘other’ in a group. Instead, they may rely on “erudition and punditry” (Bista, 1991) in work-based relationships.
It is not surprising that, given the strong collectivistic orientation and need to belong to a group to feel secure, many employees expend much effort in maintaining circles of their own people, or afno manches in Nepali. There is a real distinction between the group members and the non-group. The boundary is preserved for the sake of control, as the non-group is considered unpredictable and cannot be relied on for assistance. Afno manches may be members of one’s caste and class, ethnicity, locality, profession, etc., and can be approached whenever the need arises (Manandhar, 1998).
Appointments to senior positions are still largely based on political affiliation and personal relationships. As per the norms of most organizations, the decisions of superiors are not to be questioned, and confrontation is taboo. It is not common for managers genuinely to encourage employees to be creative and assume the ownership of tasks. Managers are not ignorant that changes are inevitable; instead, they are afraid change will affect their power and are therefore reluctant to initiate positive transformation (Afful, 1998).
In general, Nepalese employees as a group tolerate authoritarianism and avoid risk-taking behaviours that would make them lose favour with the boss or challenge the status quo. This has led to a situation wherein accommodation has been the common response to social inequalities, emphasizing adaptation rather than trying to bring about change.
Change in this traditional mindset is now becoming evident as a result of education and communication, overseas education, new development paradigms, the rise of the NGO movement and the women’s empowerment movement, an awareness of the dominance of Brahmins as the ruling elite in Nepal, and the social alienation of youth, especially youth in ethnic minority groups (Rana, 1998).
The gender ideologies of lowland South Asia have a very large influence on the gendering of organizations operating in Nepal and affect both the programmes and the individual work experiences of women within these organizations. By and large, this is a patriarchal society based on Hindu ideologies and practices that exert a strong degree of control over all aspects of women’s lives, including economic, social, emotional and religious. In addition to these regional cultural influences, the gendered aspects of global paradigms of modernism and professionalism are also evident, reinforcing the dominant gender ideologies of the region. Patriarchy is being challenged by donor-sponsored programmes for gender equality and movements of local feminists. However, models of western development are far less criticized or even discussed as harbingers of male dominance.
The identity and status of women in most communities in Nepal are largely defined by a patriarchal system, whereby law, religion, land rights and social customs are controlled for and by men. In the dominant Hindu system, a women’s identity is formed through marriage ties; ‘adherence to duty and obedience’ are held as high virtues. Following the organizing principles of the superiority of men, a woman is ranked according to her relationship with men and afforded lower status because of her inferior ritual purity.
Religion, ethnicity, culture, law, tradition, history and social attitudes place severe limits on women’s participation in public life. These factors have both shaped the culture’s world view and governed the individual self-image of women, resulting in a situation which a negligible number of Nepalese women, for example, are involved in professional, management, or decision-making positions. Because of women’s socialization, lack of control over productive resources and drastically lower levels of literacy, women have related to the professional world and the development process largely through the mediation of men. In Nepal, it is often said that a woman’s place is in the home, not in politics, hindering women’s political participation.
The complexity of ingrained cultural patterning continues to shape and confine women’s perceptions and perpetuates internal roles that slow down the empowerment of women individually and nationally. And, yet, while the forces of cultural supremacy still control a woman’s life cycle, there are now alternative paradigms and practices that are gradually generating options for change for the women of Nepal. But the obstacles are significant. The first barrier is the too-ready acceptance of a status that prevents most women from even conceiving that life could be otherwise. The second barrier is the fact that a change in women’s condition often means one must upset the male power structure and thus provoke resistance. Not only men, but also women, because of their conditioning, are engaged in the ideology of the superiority of men. Discrimination against women outside the home becomes not only covert or overt, but also unconscious and culturally normal. Consequently, both women and men tend to subscribe to the biases against women (Shtrii Shakti, 1995).
Professionalism, defined as the ideas, values, methods and behavioural norms accepted and dominant in professions or disciplines, is a means to status, power and wealth. The attraction of professionalism is the status that it brings: the acceptance and respectability that are bestowed by both peers and clients. It is characterized by a long period of education and training, including an induction into the specific profession, and high levels of competence in the subject matter (Schon, 1983).
Traditional and critical approaches to professions continue to reproduce professional men’s own construction of their gendered self-image. The very concept of profession is gendered in ways that value the behaviours of class-privileged men throughout the world (Witz, 1992). For professionals who must act as if they are experts in their fields, the subject of gender presents a challenge. They are reluctant to admit their ignorance about it and stay away from it so as not to expose their inadequate understanding. First and foremost, they must maintain the degree of status and respect that hinges upon others’ perceptions of their attainment of knowledge.
The profession of forestry
Like forestry departments around the world, Nepal’s DOF is influenced by global paradigms in which professionalism, hierarchy and masculinity are highly valued. Even where there is an awareness of the gender and development discourse, men’s power and masculine values permeate all aspects of employment, frequently in taken-for-granted ways (Collinson and Hearn, 1996). These values, to a large degree, determine the organizational cultures that are created, maintained and replicated by DOF staff.
Forestry is a field of expertise that is, according to the profession’s norms, to be practiced by those who are inducted into the profession after having obtained a forestry degree from a specialized school of forestry. As such, it is an exclusive field. Forestry training in many parts of the world resembles military training, as foresters are taught to protect resources from people. It is imbued with a similar masculinity; traditionally, the symbolic, ideal forester was a well-built man who could handle a gun, as well as a chainsaw, and tackle wild animals, malaria and the populace alike.
Relatively few women enter this domain, and most who do quickly learn to underplay and mask their femininity in a largely futile attempt to gain the respect of their male peers. More recent approaches that combine social science with forest science and efforts to elicit the participation of community members in forest-related projects have tempered these masculine orientations, but, like any other deeply held beliefs, these orientations are expressed dramatically when challenged by the representations of differing ideologies. The ‘transfer of technology’ paradigm defines the professional views of most foresters, many of whom may believe that poverty alleviation and enhanced livelihoods will follow if only community members would implement the appropriate technological fixes.
As a result of the extreme domination of men within the profession of forestry, gender gaps are frequently observed in forest-related programmes. These are manifest, most visibly, in a lack of women staff, lack of activities of interest to women, low budgets for women-related activities and unbalanced decision-making within departments, as well as within the communities where the activities are undertaken. Nepal’s DOF is no exception.
Gender policies and advocacy within Nepal
Since the 1990s, themes of poverty and social development have moved to the forefront of the development discourse within Nepal, creating an environment that is more conducive for gender equity. The adoption of the rhetoric of ‘participation’ within Nepal’s development discourse in the 1990s created an opening for a serious effort to introduce gender policies and programmes in many government organizations and NGOs. The Government’s Ninth Plan for 1997-2000 had a chapter on ‘Women and Youth Development’, made provisions for ‘Women and Gender Equity’ and recognized women as a target group in the effort to achieve the overall aim of poverty alleviation and human resource development. It also recognized the lead roles of women in animal husbandry and agriculture (though no mention was made of forest management). According to a review conducted by the FAO women in development officer on policy documents of the Government, “such a macro policy commitment provides an enabling environment to fulfil the gender mainstreaming objective of the HLFDDP” (Balakrishnan, 2000).
In the 1990s, the National Planning Commission issued a directive that all line agencies should create a gender or women’s cell; most have complied. The DOF has not. Recently, a Women’s Council was formed at the highest level, under the Prime Minister, to monitor issues of gender equality. The National Planning Commission has also looked very positively on the HLFFDP experiences as a model in the endeavour to address the twin goals of poverty alleviation and improved environmental management. In addition to these policies, the country possesses an active feminist movement that pushes for legislative reform so as to allocate land rights to women and also addresses issues of girl trafficking, education for girls, domestic violence and women’s rights.
Gender within the DOF and HLFFDP
Despite the National Planning Commission’s policy directive and despite the widespread recognition within the DOF of women’s roles as forest managers through the experiences of the Community Forestry Programme, there has been no systematic attention to gender within the DOF or the Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation. No cell or structure to address gender issues has been created, nor is there much evidence of interest within the Ministry, the DOF, or even donor agencies to do so. In fact, according to FAO staff, gender hardly ever emerges as a topic of discussion among the forestry development community in Kathmandu, including those donors representing the bilateral interests of European and North American countries. And, yet, gender equity initiatives are largely perceived within government agencies and other development organizations in Nepal as part of donor-driven agendas.
When the HLFFDP project was designed, women were singled out by IFAD and others as one of the target groups, and special attention was to be given to poor woman-headed households, so defined by their de jure and de facto status as such. One stated project objective (number 3) was to “integrate gender and disadvantaged (ethnic) group issues and considerations in the leasehold forestry and forage development approach and its implementation” (FAO and His Majesty’s Government of Nepal, 1998). Nine activities related to this objective were outlined within planning, training, extension, and monitoring and evaluation. As FAO noted, the design was responsive to the needs of rural women related to their gender roles and supports gender mainstreaming through the allocation of project funds and the placement of a gender team in the project office.
In 1998, with only vague and non-specific objectives related to gender, the HLFFDP reports, like those of most development projects in the hills of Nepal, explained the limited participation of rural women as an effect of their heavy workloads, their high degree of illiteracy, the constraints they face related to poor mobility and low status, and their lack of confidence in taking on public roles. In the period from 1992 to 1998, women’s groups constituted only 12% of the total 1 200 leasehold forestry groups, while men’s groups made up 44% of the total; 44% were mixed groups. Women acted as chairpersons in but 16% of these groups (FAO and His Majesty’s Government of Nepal, 1998).
And, yet, another factor was also at play that limited women’s participation: the attitudes of the staff of the line agency and the project coordination unit and their perceptions about rural women.
As a male-oriented organization wherein the shortage of women professionals allows traditional perspectives to go unchallenged, conservative attitudes towards rural women at first prevailed in the DOF and within the project coordination unit. The information and services related to the project were distributed by the DOF staff to village men, largely neglecting their wives, daughters and mothers. Many of the DOF staff may have looked down on rural women and doubted their abilities to work within the project, despite the fact that a large majority of the forest-related work was done by the women. Women’s inputs and perspectives were reportedly not valued and were not usually solicited.
In addition to the DOF staff, other line agencies and a project coordination unit provided technical assistance to the project. Initially, the project coordination unit was comprised of 90% men and 10% women. The staff of the DOF and DLS engaged in the project also included very few women.
Recognizing the constraints to women’s participation and the multiple responsibilities of women, the project leaders from both the DOF and FAO decided to address gender equity considerations by hiring women group promoters to organize women’s and mixed groups and to train rural men and women in gender awareness at the grass-roots level.
In 1999, on the crest of the new wave in the effort to address gender issues at the policy-making, district and grass-roots levels initiated by the project leaders, a team of three Nepalese technical assistants, all women, was added to the project coordination unit to develop mechanisms to mainstream gender considerations into the project. The three women on this “gender team”, though not foresters, were all familiar with forestry issues; the senior-most of the women had acted as a gender trainer and facilitator with the DOF and was respected because of her ability to walk and work in remote areas. With their hiring, the project coordination unit became gender balanced, with 50% men and 50% women staff working as professionals. But the line agency staff remained heavily dominated by men, and the team of women felt they were not accepted by the district forest officers.
The Strategy
A key aspect of the gender agenda within the project was the leadership provided by the two project leaders (one from the DOF and one from FAO). These managers, who were both men, had the confidence and the foresight to grant the three-woman gender team the autonomy that allowed them to develop an innovative strategy. The goal of the team was to challenge the organizational culture of the implementing agencies in order to make men counterparts in both the DOF and the project coordination unit more aware of and responsive to the realities of rural women and to bring about a change in the attitudes of the men towards women.
Following the initial search for recognition of the legitimacy of the pursuit of this transformative agenda, the team decided to its plan on objective number 3 (see above), which had not previously been explicitly taken up by the project staff. The plan was to implement activities at three levels (policy, district and grass roots), but the team chose to focus on the recruitment and development of a cadre of women group promoters throughout the project area who would direct resources for the mobilization of the participation of rural women in leasehold groups. This approach was already evident within the project, but the number of women group promoters was increased through the hiring of 30 more local women to act at the community level. Thus, the project coordination unit maintained its policy of hiring women, while the DOF was unable to do so, in part due to the constraints of the government recruitment system. Based on the initiative of a male colleague responsible for livestock, the gender team also directed their efforts to build up a separate but similar group of women livestock-promoters. The team intended to deliver gender sensitivity training to men and women leasehold members through these two groups of promoters.
Through the persistence of this gender team and the team’s sustained support and firm belief in the abilities of the rural women, ongoing gender and leadership training was provided to the group promoters in a nine-day session followed up by a refresher training course every six months. According to some of the group promoters and gender focal persons, the quality of the curricula and the training staff was very high and well suited to their needs. The gender team members themselves served as trainers, but also brought in renowned local gender and training experts as resource persons and to expose the participants to pertinent gender issues in the country. The most active women among the trainees were invited to become trainers.
Study tours within Nepal were also conducted to learn from the failures and successes of other projects involved in gender integration. In addition, the group promoters were encouraged to become active in community projects as well and to seek additional assistance and resources through local development programmes of the government and donors. Group promoters were urged to build a sense of solidarity and to encourage and depend on one another for support: a behaviour modelled on the gender team members. Indeed, whenever conflicts arose with the DOF staff or others, the gender team was always there, ready to support the group promoters by drawing on the team’s relatively higher status as project staff and making use of its links to senior staff in the line agencies and the project coordination unit.
Thus evolved a very high degree of trust in the gender team among the group promoters as they gained a sense, as one of the gender team put it, that “we had a mission; we were willing to take risks, even to lose our jobs”. Group promoters felt proud to be associated with such women and gained status through the linkages to high-level project staff and government officials.
The gender team members won the trust and respect of government staff as well, partly through their respectful behaviour towards them and partly through another innovation that they pursued at the district level. Given the paucity of women staff within the implementing line agencies (including the DLS, the Agricultural Development Bank Nepal and the Nepal Agricultural Research Centre, as well as the DOF), the team identified gender focal persons (mostly men) within these agencies and developed the gender skills of these individuals through training, coaching and guidance. These staff, who were primarily technical, thus gained an awareness of gender equity issues, women’s rights (including those outlined in international agreements such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women) and of the community work of the group promoters. Many became sincere supporters of women’s empowerment and talked of changes that had occurred within their own families after they had become aware of gender issues. But what may have motivated them most was their perception that their own work would be made easier and more effective through collaboration with the group promoters. They learned that their relationships with the communities could thereby improve, helping them to become better service providers. And, for those who became locally known as gender experts, many opportunities emerged to act as gender resource persons for other government agencies and NGOs, sometimes for a small remuneration.
Another element of the strategy centred around networking and communication. One component of this was the development and distribution of two magazines, one created for the exchange of information among the gender focal points in the technical agencies in the district and another created by the group promoters at the grass-roots level. Articles in the latter magazine boldly expressed the positions of the women group promoters on issues related to gender and women’s rights and were widely circulated throughout the DOF. A profile of one of the group promoters was produced to highlight the backgrounds of the promoters and the special challenges they faced (Joshi and de Klein, 2000). An additional component was the building and strengthening of a network of women group motivators, including non-HLFFDP motivators, who were engaged in all the DOF’s projects and programmes for the exchange of information and mutual support.
The team’s strategies for changing organizational culture at higher levels among policy-makers and planners were less elaborate than those at the grass-roots and district levels, and had less support. Still, the team promoted discussions on gender and natural resource management within workshops, meetings and other public events whenever possible. The objective of changing the organizational culture of the DOF in a significant way was far beyond the scope of the project; nevertheless, meaningful changes can be observed in the individual attitudes of DOF staff as a result of the project’s gender activities.
Initial Obstacles
Initially, there was ignorance and resistance among some DOF staff, who, until this project, had had very limited internal exposure to gender issues beyond the participation of women’s groups in the Community Forestry Programme. Many of the staff did not believe that the women group promoters could be so mobile and work effectively or that they had any knowledge or communication skills that could be useful to the project. They questioned the abilities of the women to walk in difficult terrain, to continue working after they had been married and given birth, or to speak properly with government staff. To “demonstrate their power” (in the words of one of the group promoters), some site rangers – their immediate supervisors – forced the women to sit outside their offices and refused to sign their monthly reports, which had to be submitted to the district forest officers. Partially due to a lack of clarity about the role of the group promoters, a few staff asked for favours that went beyond the women’s terms of reference. At least one of the forest guards expected one of the group promoters from a ethnic minority group to cook and work for him as an office gofer. Some behaved paternalistically towards the women. Many expected them to solve technical problems related to forest management. Overall, members of the DOF wondered how the hiring of rural women as group promoters could assist the project to achieve its objectives; many believed that this was an irrelevant initiative pushed by the project donors.
For the newly hired group promoters, there were real fears. Some from remote areas who did not personally know the rangers who had selected them imagined the possibility of some wrongdoing, especially when they were asked to board a bus to travel to the “big city” of Kathmandu for nine days of training. These are the words of one of the women from an ethnic group known to be very untrusting of outsiders:
“At first I was afraid. The ranger came to my village to ask for women interested in being group promoters. I talked to friends; they and my husband encouraged me to apply. I was the only one selected from my village. I was so scared: what would I say? I had only come to Hetauda [Makawanpur district centre] a few times before. When the ranger asked me how I would start my work and invited me to a training session in Kathmandu, I was scared. When we reached Banepa [a town near Kathmandu), I was sure that it was a brothel and that I was about to be sold. However, being with other group promoters, I started feeling safe and was convinced that this was really for training. After the training, I started work. It was very difficult, but I kept going, and, finally, the community respected me. Later, when a forest guard asked me to act as his gofer, I told him to ask at the DOF office. The staff there supported me and told him of my role.”
Before the woman gender team took up their training roles, gender training had been provided by an all-man team. Women had found this uncomfortable and felt hesitant to speak up in this environment.
Within the project coordination unit team, there was also some resistance to allowing the gender team to have complete control over the gender activities. There was some evidence that men appropriated the gender agenda (and part of the budget) by calling themselves “gender experts” and behaving in ways considered by the women to be competitive with rather than complementary to their own efforts. These actions by senior-level men in the project coordination unit were encouraged by the project managers, who were not aware there had been no consultation with the women of the gender team. Due to the strength and solidarity of the women members, such actions did not deter the women or weaken their roles within the project.
As the results proved to be positive at the district level, the gender team supported the initiative and provided the training inputs to the livestock group promoters. And, yet, this raised an issue that commonly arises when men are trained as gender experts and try to take leadership roles in programmes aimed at women’s empowerment. The need for men who can play supportive roles is well recognized, but women professionals often feel that the small space they are given to lead gender initiatives is usurped by men who may abuse their knowledge of gender for personal gain. As voiced by one member of the gender team, “this is a women’s movement through a project”, an expression of the sense of solidarity that the gender team had so carefully crafted through the training and support they offered to the group promoters. And this explained, in their opinion, the high degree of dedication and the effective performance of the group promoters in the communities and district line agency offices.
In addition to these obstacles, there was a long history of non-collaboration among the line agencies engaged in the project. Though many projects and programmes tried to create mechanisms so that the staff of DOF, DLS and other agencies could work smoothly together, cultural barriers and professional norms had usually prevented this from occurring.
The group promoters entered into this world of professional men, divided by group interests and afno manche behaviours, with enthusiasm and a commitment to bring about changes in favour of the women and men of their communities. And, by doing so, they changed not only their communities, but the cultures of the organizations that had, at first, denied them respect.
