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Gender issues in mountain areas
Inaccessibility is perhaps the greatest influence shaping the lives of mountain inhabitants. And while mountain women face many of the same challenges as women throughout the developing world, the work of women in mountain regions is intensified by altitude, steep terrain and isolation.
Women are vital to the sustainability of mountain communities and play a prominent role in agricultural production, resource management and the household. Yet little information exists about the status of women and gender relations in mountain regions. Studies about women typically focus on those in lowland and urban environments, and are absent from most economic and social histories of mountain regions, which are largely written by men.
It is impossible to describe gender relations in all mountain areas. Every region has its own distinct cultural and environmental characteristics. This text relies on extensive research in the Hindu Kush-Himalaya.
The status of mountain women
Many women in mountain regions have more freedom of movement, independence in decision-making and higher status than women in lowland areas. This may be due to less rigid religious beliefs, such as those found in indigenous systems, and because of their vital contribution in eking out a living in a harsh mountain environment.
But this higher status is at risk. Whereas inaccessibility has helped to preserve many languages and cultural traditions in mountain regions, mainstream pressures to adopt national cultures now threaten to undermine the central role of women by relegating them to the home and to domestic chores.
Division of labour
Women carry a heavier workload than men in mountain regions. While women share agricultural and livestock tasks fairly evenly with men, they also collect water, fuelwood and fodder as well as process food, cook, and care for children.
But the workload of mountain women is intensified by a number of factors in mountainous regions, including a limited access to resources, an outmigration of men who seek work in lowland areas and environmental degradation. In most cases, mountain women also lack economic independence and have only limited access to health care and education.
The survival of mountain communities requires the absence of men for trading and herding purposes. During these periods, women maintain the farm and household and participate in small trade and income-earning activities. Increasingly, however, the outmigration of men to lowland and urban centres for cash wages leaves women as heads of the household for long periods with only limited access to credit, agricultural extension, and other services.
Who has access and control of resources?
Women seldom hold ownership and tenure rights to land, trees, water and other natural resources. While women contribute most of the labour for agriculture, they rarely have formal control of land or ownership of animals. Mountain women’s lack of control over productive resources means they cannot raise collateral for bank loans, and hampers efforts to improve or expand their farm activities and earn cash incomes.
Traditionally, most extension services have been devoted to farmers who own land and who are able to obtain credit and invest it in inputs and technological innovations. Since women often lack access to land or other collateral, extension services bypass women. This marginalizes the role of women in agricultural production systems by emphasizing high-yielding crop varieties to which women have little access. This also undermines the traditional knowledge women possess about agriculture and resource management.
Women are forced to travel greater distances to collect fuel and fodder as a result of diminishing forestry resources and a declining agricultural base. Environmental degradation in mountain regions also increases the erosion of topsoil, leading to crop failure. The result is growing outmigration, food deficits and incidences of trafficking of mountain women into lowland and urban centres.
Gender, public services and politics
While the number of girls attending school in mountain areas is increasing, their enrolment is considerably lower than of boys. But the enrolment of girls in school does not guarantee their attendance. Frequently, the girls’ mothers, who require their help for childcare and domestic chores, are forced to take them out of school.
Health remains a neglected issue in mountain development. While hospitals are accessible in some areas, mountain women generally have less access to medical care, family planning or female doctors.
In the cold climate of high altitude regions, the body metabolizes food faster, so people need higher-calorie diets. Since females often have less access to household resources, women and girls are at greater risk of hunger and poor nutrition.
Most mountain communities lack access to adequate water supplies and proper sanitation facilities, raising the risk of sanitation-related illness. Women, as the primary water carriers and users are in constant contact with polluted water, increasing their vulnerability.
Throughout the developing world, women are prevented from full participation in politics because of their lack of education in addition to their heavy workload. However, the number of women voting and taking up community leadership roles in mountain regions is increasing.
Many women in mountain regions lack self-confidence and feel less important than men. Factors that influence the self-esteem of mountain women include culture, education, interaction with others outside the community and the ability to earn an income, among others. Even in Tibet, where women are commonly described as free spirited and strong willed, women have a lower self-image of themselves than do men.
While government interventions to help rural women are found in many mountain areas, there are significant gaps between the policy goals and local realities. Policies designed outside the community are inappropriate for the local context and many ignore the daily activities of men and women. Sometimes women are too busy to take advantage of health and education services. Frequently, policy directives come without funds, so they become little more than expressions of intent noted on official documents.
FAO publication. Improving gender equity in access to land
FAO's Land Tenure Notes provide information on land tenure in a format that can be used by grassroots organizations which work with small farmers and others in rural communities. This guide focuses on gender relations and how their structure may affect access to land. It provides information on "good practices" for gender inclusion and addresses some of the strategies that can be used to improve gender equity in access to land by evaluating the current situation to determine whether gender issues exist; by informing people of their rights to land; and by working to empower the marginalized. The guide presents information that NGOs and project staff can share so that people can have a better understanding of their rights to land. It concludes by outlining strategies that can be used in land tenure projects such as land reform and land titling and registration. Read more ... top
