Reducing South Asia's Gender Gap
Foremost Priorities Essential

By Khilendra Basnyat

IN South Asia, about fifty per cent of the total population constitutes women. Therefore, one cannot think of development in any sector if half of the population remains aloof from the mainstream of various development activities. As a result, the improvement of women's status has become a common concern in this region.

Lower Status

In most South Asian countries, age-old traditions and culture have hampered women's development. Although in these countries equal status is provided to men and women in their constitutions, the social and economic conditions are lower than those of their male counterparts, especially in rural areas.

Women's conditions are peculiar. They are known to work harder than their male counterparts. However, they are discriminated against their male counterparts. In Bangladesh, about thirty per cent of women reside in rural areas. Their literacy rate is only thirteen per cent. They work hard at home and also in agricultural land. Rural Bhutanese women work from sunrise to sunset. They lack modern skill. They are involved in agriculture and allied activities apart from domestic chores.

In India, rural women reveal their spatial, cultural, financial distances from the development process, widening inequality between males and females, high illiteracy rate and fertility rate due to early marriage and isolation from various development activities.

The Nepalese rural women work on their fields from morning to evening. What is more, they work at home, perform their duties as mothers and wives. However, they still lag behind in social and economic sectors from their male counterparts.

In the educational sector, Sri Lanka's women are ahead in comparison to other South Asian countries. Their literacy rate is more than ninety per cent and is considered one of the appreciable rates in the world. However, the fate of Sri Lanka's rural women is almost similar to other South Asian countries.

The situation of rural women in Maldives is also miserable. Although they labour hard, they lag behind in social and economic spheres. Out of the total illiterate population in South Asia, about sixty-three per cent are women. About two-fifths of the girls, enrolled in primary schools, drop out before they pass grade five. Consequently, the net primary school attendances was much lower for girls than for boys during 1990s. This is much lower in South Asia in comparison with the world average.

The social returns to educating girls are rarely matched for women themselves, their families and communities and for the society as a whole. Actually, girls are discriminated against in terms of their investment in their education compared to male children. The increase of the low investment in women's education is due to the traditional notion that different individuals have varied returns to investment.

In South Asia, female members of the family have lower returns of expenditure on consumption, nutrition and education. Returns of education are perceived to be greater from the male children. It is because educational skills or the technology required by the females are non-marketable, and family looses access to her income when the female member is married off. Consequently, women are usually bypassed when training, technology and access to technical assistance are being passed around.

South Asia's women have limited access to income and economic opportunities mainly because of their work being at the margin of development efforts and programmes. Of the total people living in poverty, more than seventy per cent are females because of their unequal access to economic assets and inputs such as land, credit, seeds, etc.

Till now, in rural economy, the issue of women's land rights has received very little attention in policy formulation. The lack of right to land for women also leads to discrimination in their access to bank lending, which requires mortgage of property for loans. In general rural women have no access to banking system due to their illiteracy, difficult loan procedures and usually long physical distances. The structural adjustment programme undertaken by most South Asian countries has also affected more men than women. For example, the reduction of food subsidies has a grave impact on women. It is because mothers and girls are denied adequate nutrition due to favour shown to the male members in the family.

Women's contribution in the domestic sector is considered unproductive output and is therefore not included in national accounts. Actually, if all such contribution by women were added, their share in the national income would have been equal to or greater than women's work.

Most South Asians have realised that women's work should be visible, recognised and quantified. They should have access to productive sectors at par with males. However, this has not been possible in real life. The similarities in women's status in South Asia's women's status across national, regional and international borders focus on the common problem which have peristed for a long time. The best way to help women to come forward is to encourage them in education.

Most women of South Asia are not equipped with skills essential to play their rightful role in the economy as a major source. Education helps encourage sharing in development activities.
In reality, low women's literacy rate has contributed to low women's participation in civil services. Women's development at par with man's should begin with educational development in the family. Apart from this, education for all schemes should be implemented giving special priority for women.
The huge gender gap in the development policies and investments inhibits women from performing the full potential in social, economic and political life. Generally, government policies provide little or no support to activities in the formal sectors where adequate women are engaged.

Vital Element

In fact narrowing the wide gender gap that exists in South Asia should be the foremost priority for the overall development of this region. For this initiatives should be taken on the areas which have been recognised as the vital element in improving the women's status of this region.

Community Based Tourism

By Ananda Ghimire

ALMOST 55 per cent of the visitors come to Nepal as general tourists. The 25 per cent tourists visiting Nepal for trekking and mountaineering also visit the cultural sites and appreciate them. The wealthy culture is her viable assets that have attracted visitors throughout its known history. The mountains attract the visitors but culture retains them. As in a beauty contest only physical appearance is not enough the same way the quality of tourism product needs physical appearance and culture. The culture of a society is the soul, which makes tourism survive. Culture is the essence, flavour of the tourism product. Tourism and culture should support each other.

Stereotype

The traditional use of monumental sites and squares as a cultural tourism is not enough in modern tourism concept. Out cultural sites are getting matured and are not enough to satisfy the need of repeated clients, and young adventure tourists. The strereotyped city tour is not able to express the real meaning of Nepali life style. The present state of Nepali tourism operated by private businessmen is not community based. The reinvestment of the revenues from the tourism in the community is almost nil. A focus on conservation and community integrity is essential if tourism is to remain viable over a long term.

His Majesty's Government of Nepal has identified tourism as a priority sector to alleviate poverty. Tourism as a development agent requires careful planning in order to avoid possible negative impact on culture and environment. The answer to the above objectives is possible in Eco-tourism and Eco-tourism is possible in Community Based Tourism (CBT). If the development of the tourism can be related with the involvement of local people and preservation of the Eco-system, it would be the best means of village development.

A number of questions may rise regarding community, power structure, group formation, and identification of geographical demarcation. Outside presser groups need to be evaluated. It is equally challenging to establish a fair and conflict free community. The elite always dominate the decision-making matters. The richest and most skilled people are always able to cash in on tourism.
For the purpose of Community Based Tourism (CBT) a community could be considered as a tradition based indigenous people sharing a defined area and have common resource as 'public good or service' of the area. The basic of the community is to have a common interest in benefiting from the use and proper management of these public goods. The selected community should ascertain qualities that are conducive or necessary to tourism success. Such qualities include transparency, leadership, community organisation, solidarity and co-operation.

The most important step is to select a village with tourism potentialities. The selected village should have physical and cultural richness and accessibility. The accommodations and amenities could be developed during the functional period.

The CBT is initiated and operated by local community in harmony with their traditional culture and responsible stewardship of the public property. At its further developed stage it works towards balancing power within communities so that conservation and communal well being are emphasised.
A private entrepreneur could also manage a community-based tourism. A successful business may take the responsibility of operating certain activities. Their activity, agenda is set by the community and is accountable to it.

Such an ambitious scheme should involve the local people from the beginning phase of the project so that they feel and realise the meaning and significance of the plan and be willing to contribute to it with positive attitude. They must appreciate the potentials of their settlement and how best it could be harnessed to their common benefits.

To achieve the objective of the CBT the selected village should be economically sustainable. For this purpose it needs to be implemented and function at different levels; village level and governmental level in co-operation with business enterprises for the marketing linkage.

CBT at the functional level programme needs to be beneficially implemented with concert effort and creative co-ordination among the agencies. The community needs to create marketing linkage with business entrepreneurs. Assessment of available resources is the most important aspect to operate successful tourism as it is an economic activity and is the most complicated subject to deal with. Community leadership, supported by marketing linkage are the basic components of successful community based tourism. The village will link with tourism entrepreneurs as a supportive not as competitor. The village will provide information and win the trust of the businessmen with their service. At the same time basic need of the tourist is identified and opened or developed such amenities including accommodation if necessary.

At the village level social mobilisation and awareness is necessary to mobilise and create a permanent mechanism to take care of the public property. The public property includes culture, manmade and natural attractions, which attract tourist. In this process villagers will improve the basic health situation, clean streets, lanes, and ponds, renovate and preserve historical monuments.

Policy

At he policy level government will review the poverty alleviation policies, tourism law, rules and policies. At the same time it will co-operate with different departmental agencies involve at the selected village. NGO and INGO need to help them to capacity built up. In cooperation with the government they will organise workshops, meetings, seminars, and FAM trips to train the villagers to run successful tourism operation.

Promoting Employment

By Hum Lal Bhattarai

POVERTY has been one of the gravest problems of the country. On the one hand it has largely prevented our access to basis needs such as health and education, and on the other it has adversely affected the social upliftment to a great extent. Besides, the process of empowering the society and ensuring good governance has not taken a satisfactory pace owing to this problem. Taking cognizance of this profoundly, the Eighth plan took poverty alleviation as one of its prime objectives. For the first time in the history of our plans the Ninth plan adopted it as the one and only objective, and so has been in the Tenth plan too.

Sustainable and wide economic growth in agriculture, equitable distribution of resources, empowerment and mainstreaming of the people below the poverty line, creation of income generation programmes, reduction of dependency upon foreign aid and promotion of employment opportunities are some of the important measures for poverty reduction. More or less, our plans have focused on these matters from the very beginning.

The important need of the present is to accentuate employment for poverty alleviation. It ought to be so because there has emerged an imbalance between overall population growth rate and economically active population growth rate. The former is 2.3 percentage whereas the latter is 3 percentage. If this rift is not evened up in time, a large part of the national labour power will remain unproductive, which will make a great dent in the national production.

The problem of semi-unemployment is more complex than the complete employment in that the former reaches in the vicinity of 40 percentage while the latter reaches around three percentage. This type of outcome is largely due to our inability to properly address the semi-unemployment hidden in agriculture, fisheries and forestry, which cover in the proximity of 65 per cent of the total labour power.
Promotion of employment can be ensured only when there is an apt consistence between the demand and production of manpower. But reports have shown that there is a dearth of concurrence between the generation of manpower and the need of the market. For this, our policy and tendency of not laying adequate emphasis on technical education and vocational training are responsible. On account of this, our manpower has not been capable of performing expeditiously in the fast changing situations.

Since economic growth is a pre-condition for employment promotion, to achieve employment-oriented economic growth is a challenge. Besides, to stretch the access of the backward and poor people to resources, skill and market is another challenge, without which the generation of self-employment is quite difficult.

The geographical factor of our country is also held responsible to impede employment promotion, as most of its area is covered with remote, mountainous and outlying parts. There is also a scarcity of fitting coordination among governmental, non-governmental, private and civil society entities to augment job opportunities. Labour market information system is also in need of more expansion and intensification.

These days the remittance from abroad has made a considerable contribution to our national economy. A recent report claims that more than ten billion rupees enter Nepal every year as a remittance. Hence to promote foreign employment through identifying the required labour ability and providing such type of training in our country is equally important. For this making the special provision of loan will be very effective. Although it has been declared in some budget speeches, it has not been carried out into practice efficaciously.

So, in order to meet the target of the Tenth plan to reduce the poverty to 30 per cent, the employment sector should be fostered in such a way that it would provide a note-worthy contri-bution to it.