Women Participation in Community Forest Management (A Study of Gwashi Ghanteshwar Community Forest, Malakheti VDC4&5, Kailali)

Abstract

Forests are one of the most important natural resources for sustaining thelivelihood of rural people in Nepal, as the subsistence farming systems aremostlyembodied within forestry and livestock. The lives of the rural poor andwomen are closely associated with the forest resources, as these groups are theprimary managers and users of the resources. Women's roles and day to daycontribution is incredibly important in household activities, agriculturalproduction and natural resourcemanagement. Forestplays an important rolein our daily life. Nepalese economybased on agriculture and livestock farming. Community forestry was introduced in Nepal in 1978.The community forestryapproach has been highly successful in the protection of forest in the terai ofNepal. Women are playing an important role in sustainable development ofcommunity forests. However, their role is neither properly identified norexplored. So, the study focuses to the women's participation in communityforest management ofGwashi Ghanteshwarcommunity forest user's group. The general objectives of the study is to find the women's participation incommunity forest user group's activities whereas the specific objectives of thestudy are:To know the socio-economic condition of women of CommunityForestry members (such as: age, caste/ethnicity, religion, education,occupation, income-expenditure structure),To trace out women participationin community forest management activities (such as: management activities,attaining meeting, formulating plan, and decision making process),To explorethe problem faced by the women in management activities and implementation. Gwashi Ghanteshwarcommunity forest was selected for the study. This studywas based on primary and secondary data.The total population of the universewas 2,961 of which 1,519 were male and 1,442 were female with 420households. All households were the users of Gwashi Ghanteshwar communityforest. Among total population of the universe (10 percent of each castegroup's total Households)42women were selected as a respondent from the sample units by the proportionate size of different castes/ethnicity group.Among42women respondents:17from Kshetri, 13from Brahmins, 7fromDalit (3 Kami, 2 Damai, and2Tamrakar) and5from Chaudhari. The presentworking committee is led by women and among 19 members of workingcommittee 11 were females.Key information Interview, focus group discussionand other data collection techniques were used. According to the field survey there was some obstacles for women toparticipate community forestry activities. Such as, traditional male dominatedculture, households work load, lack of empowerments poor economiccondition, lack of knowledge. Majority of respondents reported that both male and female were gettingbenefit from community forest. Participation of women in attending meetingwas like audience is high. Taking part actively in general meeting, sharing indecision making and discussion was very low. In thiscommunity forest Chhetris caste(40%)are the dominating forest usergroups whereasDalitandChaudharisare in minority.Participation ofChhetriand Brahmin community is high in comparison to other caste. Women participation in executive committeewas satisfactory butthey couldn'tactive in formulating and implementing the plans and decisions. The users aresatisfied with the work carried out by forest user committee and communityforest program.