Participation of Women in Community Forestry: A Case Study of Pawannagar Vdc, Dang
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Department of Rural Development
Abstract
This thesis entitled Participation of Women in Community Forestry: A Case Study of
Pawannagar VDC, Dang was targeted to examine the real situation of women's participation.
The objectives of this study were (i) to examine the representation status of women in community
forest user group committee (ii) To find out the problems faced by women in community forest
activities (iii) To assess the women's participation in different activities of the community
forestry. The research design of this study was both descriptive and analytic. Regarding the
sample size 60 respondents were taken from 240 households. Different methods i.e. household
survey, observation and through structured questionnaire were adopted for data collection. The
data collected from primary and secondary sources are presented in tables to make the
comprehensive analysis.
The study has found that in Takiyapur CFUG, respondents are the age between 25 to 35
years the users are from different caste and ethnic group. The study has further found that
women are mainly engaged in primary sector which has very low productivity. Similarly their
educational status is also very poor; according to them this is the main cause of low
representation of women in CF executive committee. Women’s participation in regular group
meeting is also found very low though they use to attain some specific meetings regularly. It is
quite surprising that more than half, 60 percent of the total respondents are not only non
familiar with executive committee, they also don't have any idea regarding executive committee.
Consequently, womens role in conservation, policy formulating and benefit sharing is relatively
very poor as compared to men.
So far as the forest conservation is concerned, plantation is not took place for many
years. Mean while various operational activities like punning, thinning and fire-line
conservation are also not carried out in this particular CFUG. By contrast, user groups are
involved in different activities inside the forest such as firewood and fodder collection, grazing
cattles etc which are some of the hindrances in the growth of N/TFPs.