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Community Empowerment - Issues and Challenges

PARTICIPATORY COMMUNICATION FOR GENDER EQUALITY IN RURAL COMMUNITY

 

Prof. D.B. KRISHNA KUMARI

Head, Dept. and Centre for Women’s Studies, S.P. Mahila Visvavidyalayam, Tirupati

 

Introduction

Women and men have different and unequal resources and responsibilities, which have implications on their existing and potential capacity to contribute to development. Development policy and planning must take cognizance of this if it is to ensure efficient and equitable use of scarce resources. The roles that women play are different in any given society and their situation is determined by the legislation, religious norms, economic status or class, cultural values, ethnicity and types of productive activity of their country, community and household. Examining gender relations as power relations makes clear that these are sustained by the institutions within which gender relations occur. For women, absence of power results in the lack of access to and control over resources, a coercive gender division of labour, devaluation of their work, and a lack of control over their own labour, mobility as well as sexuality and fertility.

Transformation for gender equality envisages the empowerment of women, requiring conditions that enable women to exercise their autonomy; it also envisages a process of self-empowerment, in which women begin to re-examine their lives critically and collectively. Measures of gender equality, therefore, require an assessment of the degree to which resources have been redistributed; whether State policy has facilitated women’s autonomy; and the extent to which unequal gender relations have been transformed.

Women are an integral part of farming households. They produce over half of the food in many developing countries, bear the most responsibility for household food security and contribute to household well being through their income – generating activities. In most of the areas in India sex-based division of labour is fairly rigid. The rural women participate in almost all the agricultural operations, but there are certain activities which have traditionally been left to women such as post harvest processing, weeding, storage, winnowing, bird scaring, drying and cleaning of produce. The nature and extent of women’s participation in rural sector, however vary from State to State, caste to caste, crop to crop, age of women etc. Their participation is higher than men and her partnership/involvement in agriculture can be described as a manager, decision maker and labourer.

The following table no 1 clearly states about women’s contribution and consequences in the rural economy:

Table – 1

I. GENDER BASED DIFFERENCES IN RURAL ECONOMY

Access to

Gender-Based Differences

Consequences on Woman

Land

Land title and tenure tend to be vested in men by legal or socio-cultural norms

Small holdings, No resources and entitlements

Extension and Training

Extension is provided by male agents. Male – Female contact is culturally restricted

Ignorance of women, over workload, responsibilities and constraints

Technology

Difficulties in access, cultural restriction, consideration of women’s crops and livestock as low priorities

Lower levels of technology and skill development

Finance

Limited education and mobility, socio cultural barriers, requirement of collateral security

Less access to formal financial services.

Time

Work longer total hours on productive and household work and paid and unpaid work.

Gender – based divisions of labour in child care and household responsibilities

Mobility

Over burden of work and socio-cultural norms

Less mobile

Education and raining

Less educated and illiteracy

Less access to technical information on farm sector and allied activities

In general women have to perform several activities and roles compared to that of men in the same household:

A wider range of tasks and enterprises

Different production objectives and

Dissimilar production constraints.

Although rural women are assuming an increasingly prominent role in agriculture, they remain among the most disadvantaged of population. Food and Agricultural Organization’s (FAO) studies demonstrate that while women in most developing countries are the mainstay of agricultural sectors, the farm labour force and food systems (and day to day family subsistence), they have been the last to benefit from or in some cases have been negatively affected by-prevailing economic growth and development processes. Gender bias and Gender blindness persist but the farmers are still generally perceived as ‘male’ by policy makers, development planners and agricultural service deliverers.

The following table No. 2 clearly states the gender issues in rural sector and how the actions should be taken for women’s visibility in development:

Table - 2

II. GENDER ISSUES IN RURAL SECTOR

Action to be taken

visibility for women share

1. Policies

Correct de-jure gender bias and ensure a gender – balanced approach.

Legal Equality:

- Property law, land title, and tenure

- Access to credit and savings

Gender Explicit in:

National development plan

Rural Development plan

- Agricultural development plan

2. Assess gender relations in the household

Specifying action on the differences and needs expressed by the rural women.

Women’s participation in family and community decision making.

- Male-Female contact culturally restricted

- Gender difference in customary law

3. Determine number of de facto women heads of farming households and women role in rural sector.

Special actions to ensure that women’s access to farming resources, services and opportunities can be designed as needed.

4. Expertise and pressure groups for gender

Potential partners, implementers and sources of information can be identified.

The visibility of women in rural sector depend upon the structural transformation.

III. INFORMATION SCENARIO OF RURAL WOMEN

The dissemination of information for everyday need of rural women will have certain notable features:

The agencies generating such information have made use of a wide range of media to disseminate their messages from the traditional folk media to the most modern ICT and technology for growing community participation.

The majority of women are living in isolation without coverage of supportive services and development plan, are poorly represented in rural sector. They have no access to information and communication services and limited coverage of rural community media.

The development of new insights and perspectives among rural communities especially are important in decision making and well being of rural women. Better information services help to achieve a society in which citizen’s, human relationships in their own communities and between people of different cultures, traditions and countries contribute to better understanding for world co-operation. An information system aims to cater to the information requirements of a broad range of users. The participatory methods using visual and verbal model of communication have been effectively used for appraisal, planning, monitoring and evaluation of the development programmes. The use of methods alone is not enough to sustain the participation of the community in the development process. Other significant aspects which need to be strengthened include the institutionalization of the processes, delegation of responsibility and decentralization of decision making and resource allocation.

The roles of different actors can be geared towards the realization of the rural development through empowerment of women/people. There is a need to create an environment where people themselves are the key actors, and all the other actors play a facilitative and supportive role- NGO sector, Government sector (decision makers, policy makers, politicians).

The following chart clearly states about the percolation process from top to bottom approach:

Several studies have shown that women’s commitment is greater in the maintenance and protection of agriculture, nature resource management and rural sector. Women’s activities in the rural areas are changing with mounting pressure on land, environmental degradation, increased rural poverty and male out migration. Female headed households, in particular may suffer from labour constraints, especially for the typically male task of land preparation. In addition, house hold data often underestimate the proportion of de facto female headed households. Women tend to concentrate their agricultural activities around the households, primarily because of their domestic and reproductive roles, they play a crucial role in food production, post harvest activities, livestock care, nature resource management, cash cropping etc. Even certain tasks, activities or enterprises are regarded as “female” and “male”.

The participation of the people is increasingly emphasized as one of the key requirements for rural sector. A participatory approach drawn out complex and multiple pressures and enables the local people to apprise, analyse, plan, act, monitor and evaluate the results or changes of interventions, made by Government and NGO’s. The analytical focus is on the group rather than the individual and on comparing rather than measuring. There are three broad reasons for women’s involvement in the rural sector:

Depletion of natural resources affects women more severely than men.

Women are marginalized not only in socio-economic structures but as a group in most of the development projects/process. This will provide more access and control to income, natural resources and enhance their knowledge and skills and

Women have vast traditional knowledge about various species, forest produce and its uses, seeds, agriculture practices, water harvesting and its use. Their involvement ensure more optimal utilization of the talents and knowledge.

Separate tasks

In this pattern, some or all of the tasks within a single cycle are assigned by gender. Common tasks assignments include the following:

Men prepare the ground, women plant or transplant the crop.

Seed selection and storage is done by women in many systems.

Ploughing is done by men.

Certain types of plant protection may be assigned to women

Certain kinds of harvesting tasks may be assigned by gender.

Post harvest processing and storage of cereals, vegetables, tree crops and dairy products are often women’s tasks.

Care of animals when they are young or sick is often women’s work.

Milking is often assigned to one sex or the other.

The following are the some of the factors affecting women’s participation in rural sector:

Balancing triple roles: Women are not only performing household chores and child care but also working on farms and other income generating activities. As a result they have little time for community work.

Inconvenient time and duration of extension visits: Inconvenient timing and long hours of meetings/extension lecturers were impracticable for women to participate.

Resistance from village men: lack of support and discouragement in the family resist their presence.

Lack of self confidence and interest: Women are trapped in a vicious cycle where they feel that they posses only few skills to sustain in public sphere and they are confined to domestic sphere.

Lack of interest: Fear of intimidation is one of the main obstacles to the participation of poor and lower caste women.

IV. PARTICIPATORY COMMUNICATION AND RURAL WOMEN

Communication creates awareness about new things and a desire for change leading to development. Significance of communication in equipping people with new information and skills and mobilizing them for their willingness and participation in various development programmes is important. Democratization of information, education and communication (IEC) are pre-requisites of grass root development, more so in the case of women. Two way communication helps sharing and participation of the rural women for sustainable development.

As the participation of women was considered as one of the important component for their empowerment, women’s equal participation in decision making process, policy and administration is essential. Therefore effective techniques for their involvement in different issues of rural economy should be used for their sustainability, equality and empowerment.

V. METHODS OF PARTICIPATORY COMMUNICATION

Broadly speaking the following are the methods to be utilized for raising participation and involvement of the women for the development of rural sector under three categories: (i) Individual method, (ii) Group Method and (iii) Mass Method. The extension workers have to play important role to facilitate the rural women/people to participate in the process of information, storage, retrieval and dissemination in modern and traditional communication channels. They have to lay an intermediary role between the stakeholders of rural development and rural people for their two way involvement/process or top to bottom or bottom to top approaches for their emancipation.

(i) Individual method:

In this method, the extension worker communicates with the women individually, maintains separate identity of each person. It is used for small groups and it involves less time. It enhance effectiveness of group and facilitates getting feedback information.

This method further is divided into three, 1. Group and Home Visit: It is a direct face to face contact by the extension worker with the woman or homemaker, their home or farms for extension work. 2. Office Call: it is a call made by a women or home maker for obtaining information and assistance, and 3. Personal letter: It is written