Women's Participation in Community Forest Management A Case Study of Kumroj Community Forest Users's Group, Kumroj VDC, Chitwan District

Abstract

Community forestry was introduced in Nepal in 1978. The community forestry approach has been highly successful in the protection of forests in the terai of Nepal. Women are playing an important role in sustainable development of community forests. However, their role is neither properly identified nor explored. So, the study focuses to the women's participation in community forest management of Kumroj Community Forest User's Group. To explore the target issues, some general and specific objectives are made. The general objective of the study is to find the women's participation in community forest user group's activities whereas the specific objectives of the study are: 1. To find out women's participation in Kumroj community forestry user groups activities. 2. To find the socio-economic condition of community forest user's. 3. To find the causes affecting women's participation in communityforest management. 4. To find the view of local people about the women's role towards CFUG. KCFUG of Chitwan district is selected for the present study. The reason for the selection of the site is convenient for the researcher, which is held on the basis of exploratory and descriptive research method. The study is based on primary and secondary data and the nature of data is qualitative. 5 Among the total households, only 145 households are chosen by caste or ethnicity for the study. Female respondents were selected for interview and male as well as female were selected according to the convenience for household survey. Key informants and focus group discussion alsoused to collect information. According to the field survey, Female literacy rate is 56.94 percent and only 32.41 percent household heads are female. In forest resource collection, females involvement in firewood collection is 56.25 percent,in grass cutting is 66.07 percent and low participation in timber cutting and collection because hired workers also has been used. Participation ingrass and firewood collection of female is higher man the rest. Participation of women in general meeting of KCFUG is only 26.21 percent and participation of males are 73.79 percent. Participation of female in attending meeting was like audience is high. Taking partactively in general meeting, sharing in decision-making and discussion is very low. According to the government policy minimum 1/3 of the committee members must be female but in KCFUG committee there arejust 2 female members among 15 members of the total committee. According to the field study, there are so many obstacles forwomen to participate community forest activities, such as; traditional male dominated culture, household work load, lack of knowledge about community forestry, poor economic condition, lack of permission to attend meeting, lack of empowerment, feeling of women needless to participate in public concern, less chance to view for women in every sector of development activities, illiteracy etc.