Inclusive Representation of Females in Community Forest Management (An Anthropological Study of Pokhari Ban Community Forest Arthardandakharka, Kusma

Abstract

Nepal's rural setting is a complex structure of social system consisting of hierarchical social structure that includes different economic and social classes, oppressive castes system and gender discrimination, which is developed from feudal, bureaucratic and caste and gender biased interests. The two important factors to the success of community forest management are gender and equity, those allowing women and others marginalized groups to participate effectively in the processes of good governance in forests is essential. Through decision making is an important function in forest user groups and requires the participation of the whole community in the practice. Disadvantaged groups are frequently marginalized in Nepal for instances, women must work at home and the poor must work for wages, thus they have spare time. Statement of the Problem Although community forest has been successful in terms of their institutional capacity to get people organized and form capital at group level, perhaps the most critical in terms of livelihoods and the relatively weak in generation of financial capital for the forest dependent poor, women and Dalits. Community Forestry is criticized for not being able to address the needs of women, lower caste and poorer segment of the society who are the real users of forest (Hobley, 1991: Pp-87). Emerging evidence indicates that the decision-making process in most of the CFUGs is captured by wealthier and upper caste male and the interests and concerns of poor, women and Dalits, who depend more on common property resources for their livelihood, are not adequately considered in decision-making process (Bhatta, 2002: Pp-28). Although community forestry guideline advocates equal representation of male and female in executive committee but in practice minorities groups (poor women and disadvantaged groups) are not adequately represented in executive committee (Regmi, N., 2007: Pp-45). Only a few studies have been conducted regarding status of inclusion of women in community forestry. But a lot is in relation to the community forestry issues, but they fail to address the status of the females properly, so the researcher had planned to carry this research mainly focusing to meet the objectives.