FEATURES NEWS THE RISING NEPAL (DAILY)

Women's Contribution In Economy
Valuable Input

By Prativa Subedi

WE hear a lot about the plans and policies specifically focused on women's equal access and control over economic resources due to the fact that there is an inequality between women and men. Women are either absent or poorly represented in economic decision making areas at all levels. Insufficient attention to gender analysis has created the situation where women's work is ignored in economic structures. Economics as an academic discipline is complicated and difficult to understand for non-academics.

Barriers

The majority of women who are making a significant contribution are not aware about daily economics. In addition economists are biased about women's contribution. Women's work is less paid and unremunerated which helps to raise the economy's productivity but does not raise women's income directly. Women migrant workers and domestic workers are contributing to the economy by sending their remittances and also through their participation in the labour force. In our country the majority of women are facing many barriers that prohibit their economic autonomy and sustainable livelihoods. Many financial institutions are established in the cities with the introduction of liberalised economic policy. However it is not accessible for majority of the women and they have to depend on loans with high interest from rich villagers.

Women in Nepal are working primarily in the agricultural areas and are involved in income generating activities. Most of the women work in the informal sector because they are restricted from going into the formal sector. They lack education, training, and sufficient services such as childcare. Moreover, they hold the majority of the family's responsibilities, which further prevents them from moving into the formal sector.

However, women are still contributing a lot to our country's economy. Due to the lack of gender sensitive data collection, women's contributions and concerns remain invisible. Many programmes and policies are still insensitive to improve the conditions since they often just perpetuate inequalities between men and women.

Women contribute a very significant percentage to the GDP, but they have very little access to the economic resources that they generate. The agriculture sector contributes 40 per cent of the total GDP of Nepal and out of that total women contribute more than 60 per cent.

In terms of employment, 83 per cent of the labor force is engaged in the agriculture sector while only 17 per cent are working in the non-agriculture sector. The majority of women are employed in the informal and least productive sectors. They usually do not get paid because it is considered part of their traditional household chores. Moreover, women's contribution to the national economy does not get properly accounted because household chores and farm labour do not usually converted into monetary value. Only seven per cent of women work in non-agricultural sectors. Due to the patriarchal nature of our society and discriminatory practices and legal provisions, women are kept in this low status and their work stays invisible.

Lately, women's importance as significant contributor to the nation has been realised. However, the economic and land rights of women is not the main focus. Last year, some laws were amended and inheritance property rights are now given to women but in an impractical way. In other words, a daughter is allowed to inherit her father's property until she gets married. In reality a daughter will not get property with this provision.

For these reasons women are still excluded from economic transactions in the mainstream economic dialogue and, in turn, from the formulation of economic policies. For a decade, women have been questioning the male biased nature of economic policies. With the Maoists violent activities for over seven years economy is badly affected. Through their violent activities in the country they have created terror. Many young people have already died in the name of people's war and while maintaining law and order by government. Many male members of the community have left the villages because of conflict situation. Again women are bound to take all the responsibilities in the absence of male members.

Women's organisations and activists continue to demand gender sensitive economic policies and programmes. The government drew an action plan with the help of non-governmental organisations, industry, the banking sector and academia for women and the economy to become part of the National Plan of Action to implement the commitment made in the world conferences.
The long term objectives for women's economic participation and decision making is to ensure equal economic rights for women by increasing their employment opportunities as well as their access, control and ownership of economic resources. In addition, the goal is to make a true assessment of women's contributions to the national economy by improving the national accounting system.
The main priority of the Tenth Periodical Plan is poverty alleviation, women's empowerment and gender mainstreaming. This plan mentioned many faces of poverty and focused on economic growth, distribution of resources, human resource development, social balance, empowerment and government. In the area of economic and social reform they focus on the reduction of maternal mortality rate, child mortality rate, family planning, primary education, and women's literacy. These plans and programmes are aimed for the populations who are below the poverty line. These issues were also mentioned during the Ninth Periodical Plan but they could not implement them well. So in the Tenth Plan the same issues are stressed. The plans recognise the marginalisation of women in the national economy and a gender mainstreaming strategy has been adopted to reduce gender gaps and disparities at all levels.

Meaningful

However, up to this date, planners have failed to draw examples of women's empowerment from within the country. For the last ten years, many new programmes were introduced instead of strengthening ongoing meaningful programmes. Development work should be valued more than the strategies of party political interests.

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