The Hidden Side Of Group Behaviour: A Gender Analysis Of Community Forestry Groups

Communities managing common pool resources, such as forests, constitute a significant example of group unctioning. In recent years community forestry groups have mushroomed in South Asia. But how participative, equitable and efficient are they? In the short term, many have done well in regenerating degraded lands. Are they, however, performing at their best potential, and will they sustain? Equally, are the benefits and costs being shared equitably between rich and poor households and between women and men? The paper demonstrates that seemingly successful groups can cloak significant gender exclusions, inequities and inefficiencies. It argues that these outcomes can be traced especially to rules, norms, perceptions, and the personal and household endowments and attributes of those participating. Reducing the gender bias embedded in these factors would depend on women's bargaining power with the State, the community and the family. The paper outlines the likely determinants of women's bargaining power in these arenas, and analyses ground experience in terms of progress made and dilemmas encountered

Rethinking Agricultural Production Collectivities : The case for a group approach to energize agriculture and empower poor farmers

In the face of persistent rural poverty, an incomplete agrarian transition, the predominance of small and marginal farms and an emerging feminization of agriculture, this paper argues for a new institutional approach to poverty reduction, agricultural revival and social empowerment. It makes a strong case for a group approach to agricultural investment and production through promoting collectivities of the poor which, it argues, would be much more effective on all these counts than the traditional individual-oriented approaches. The collectivities proposed here, however, are small-sized, voluntary, socio-economically homogeneous, and participatory in decision-making, and in keeping with the principles emphasized in a human-rights approach to development. This is in sharp contrast to the largely failed historical efforts at early socialist collectivization, and some similar thrusts in non-socialist developing countries in the 1960s and 1970s, which were massive in scale, top-down, and typically coercive and non-participatory. The paper outlines the potential benefits of bottom-up agricultural production collectivities and describes a range of successful cases from the transition economies and South Asia. It also reflects on the contexts in which such collectivities may be expected to succeed, and how these efforts could be replicated for wider geographic coverage and impact.Agricultural production collectivities, food security, women farmers, self-help groups, transition economies, group farming

Negociación y relaciones de género : dentro y fuera de la unidad doméstica

La naturaleza de las relaciones de género (relaciones de poder entre mujeres y hombres) no es fácil de comprender en toda su complejidad. Pero estas relaciones influyen de diversos modos en los resultados económicos.' La complejidad proviene sobre todo del hecho de que las relaciones de género (como todas las relaciones sociales) encarnan tanto lo material como lo ideológico. Se manifiestan no sólo en la división del trabajo y de los recursos entre mujeres y hombres, sino en las ideas y representaciones (la atribución a mujeres y hombres de distintas capacidades, actitudes, deseos, rasgos de personalidad, patrones de conducta, etcétera). Las relaciones de género están formadas por estas prácticas e ideologías, y al mismo tiempo contribuyen a formarlas, en interacción con otras estructuras sociales jerárquicas, como la clase, la casta y la raza. Al no ser iguales en distintas sociedades, ni estáticas a través de la Historia (como prueban numerosos estudios de diferentes culturas, regiones y comunidades), deben verse fundamentalmente como construcciones sociales (y no biológicamente determinadas). Sin embargo, no se ha comprendido aún bien el proceso de esta construcción social, ni cómo se mantienen ciertas formas de desigualdad de género, ni cómo podrían cambiar

Experiments in farmers' collectives in Eastern India and Nepal: Process, benefits, and challenges

Do farmers' collectives, which pool land, labour, capital, and skills to create medium-sized production units, offer a more viable model of farming for resource-constrained smallholders than individual family farms? A participatory action research project in Eastern India and Nepal provides notable answers. Groups of marginal and tenant farmers, catalysed by the project, evolved into four different collective models with varying levels of cooperation, gender composition, and land ownership/tenancy status. Based on 3 years of action research, this paper examines how the models evolved and their differential outcomes. All groups have gained from cultivating contiguous plots in their efficiency of labour and machine use for land preparation and irrigation, and from economies in input purchase. Several collectives of tenant farmers have also enhanced their bargaining power vis-a-vis an entrenched landlord class and thus been able to negotiate lower rents and refuse long-standing feudal obligations. However, the models differ in their extent of economic gain and their ability to handle gender inequalities and conflicts over labour sharing. The paper explores the historical, regional, and cultural factors that could explain such differences across the models. It thus offers unique insights into the processes, benefits, and challenges of farmers' collectives and provides pointers for replication and further research

Powerful-synergies: Gender Equality, Economic Development and Environmental Sustainability

This is a collection of evidence-based papers by scholars and practitioners that explore the interconnections between gender equality and sustainable development across a range of sectors and global development issues such as energy, health, education, food security, climate change, human rights, consumption and production patterns, and urbanization. The publication provides evidence from various sectors and regions on how women's equal access and control over resources not only improves the lives of individuals, families and nations, but also helps ensure the sustainability of the environment