Women entrepreneurs have low risk taking capacity

Democracy is a necessary and not sufficient condition for making progress towards gender equality, given the initial situation of unequal and in-egalitarian social structures and gender relations. The modernization process some times reinforces gender subordination. At other times new elements of discrimination are introduced in relatively egalitarian communities.

The modernization process and the liberalization policies followed after the democratic changes in the country have provided some non-traditional employment opportunities to women, particularly in the carpet industries and the textile sector in general. But comparative to men their concentration in agriculture has increased.

As a result of interaction of complex social and economic processes. Women in Nepal face several disadvantages in the economic. Field. Besides their limited access to productive assets - the land and property, credit and modern avenues of knowledge and information, other major economic issues include their uneven access to new avenues of employment and concentration of women in low productivity agriculture. This has led to high and increasing work burden without concomitant increase in access to resources. Child labor, women’s concentration at lower level jobs, poor working conditions and lack of child care facilities at work places are additional problems related to their formal sector employment. The trade union’s generally neglect of women’s problems. Women also face risk to personal security and sexual harassment in the formal sector.

Progressive loss of proprietorship in the informal sector employment and generally lower level returns on their enterprise are women’s additional problems. Women entrepreneurs face special problems of resource scarcity, marketing access, low level of technology and have low risk taking capacity.

A problem to be noted is also the declining economic activity rates of urban women probably signaling the "domestication of women" (See Acharya, 1997).

Despite of HMG’s declare objectives of integrating women in development since Sixth Plan, a diaspora of micro-credit and small training programs for women, Proportion of non-agricultural employment opportunities for women and men is decreasing in the country. Agriculture is getting increasingly feminized. Women, in 1995/96, formed 53 percent of the agricultural labor force compared to 36 percent in 1981. Individual for example of successes of women’s income earning and forestry groups (see for example, PCRW evaluation reports, and Pandey, 1990 for an example in forestry) may abound. But such programs have not been able either to make dent in the traditional in-egalitarian socio-economic structures or to reverse the process of marginalization of women from social production, which is a special feature of advanced capitalism.

Village craftsmen/women are out of jobs on a large scale. The proportion of production workers has declined substantially in rural areas between the two surveys. This decline has been sharper for women. With very few alternative employment opportunities women are falling back to agriculture or forced to earn livings by unwanted activities such as commercial sex work (see New ERA, 1998).

Overall women earn about 4/5th of what earn in agriculture but 3/4th outside of agriculture as daily wages. What annual payments are included in daily average earning these ratios go up slightly.

Generally women have much less access to institutional credit, both at individual and household enterprise levels, irrespective of ecological regions, urban/rural areas are ethnicity/caste. However, Brahmin/Chhetri and Newar women have grater access to credit compared to women in other caste/ethnicity. Women from low caste and disadvantaged ethnicity have no access to institutional credit at all. Women’s access to credit is limited because both formal and informal credit institutions are geared to funding property owners. All formal credit institutions seek tangible collateral for loan and women are effectively sidelined from institutional credit since women have little access to inherited property. The village moneylenders are also interested more in earning high interest or acquiring the debtor’s property rather than financing people need. In-spite of the multiple credit packages women still have very little access to institutional credit as discussed below.

Although using 1991 Agricultural Credit Survey data Sharma, (1996) found no significant difference in the poverty incidence between male headed (MHH) and female headed (FHH) households (50.7 percent vs. 47.2 percent), the employment and earnings scenario described above may have changed the situation in favor of men. Further, Agricultural Credit Survey data related only to rural areas, but gender inequality in employment and earnings opportunities may be reflected more in urban/rural differences and women’s concentration in subsistence agriculture rather than in income differences in rural areas per se.

The process of dichotomization of production and reproduction must be stopped. This could happen in two ways. First women’s access to better quality jobs in the organized production sectors could be facilitated by improving their access to education and improving their mobility by provision of easier transport facilities. Secondly, assistance in their reproductive responsibilities by work sharing and introduction of simple technologies at home and provision of childcare facilities at the work place in the modernized sector would improve greatly their access to Jobs. In the context of mountain and hill areas road accessibility seems to be the most important factor for increasing women’s mobility and access to education and health facilities. Although some poor women may lose porter’s work, transportation facilities are important to improve returns to women’s enterprises. Otherwise benefits of productivity and income gains tend to be monopolized by the middlemen. It is well recorded by now that introduction of cash corps or market oriented dairy in the already dichotomized communities tend to marginalize women, increase their work load and reduce their control over household resources. Proper attention needs to be paid to such side effects in project designs and appropriate measures incorporated in the projects themselves to take care of such unintended effects.

It is also clear that policy packages must differ as per the cultural groups. In Indo-Aryan groups with already entrenched patriarchal value systems, the policy packages must address the systematic gender discriminations, while for the Tibeto-Burma groups the policy packages must be culture sensitive and designed with care not to introduce gender bias in employment or social behavior in general. Decentralization of decision making and people’s participation the real sense is a must in both cases.

A well designed program of enterprise development seems to have had a positive effect on women’s status, both in the Indo-Aryan and the Tibeto-Burman groups in as indicated by the Dhampus case under the Annapurmna Conservation Area Project in Nepal. From the Dhampus study, three conclusions seem to be relevant for this article:

Women’s workload has declined in general and women’s social status has improved both in the Gurung and Brahmin/Chhetri communities, both in the private and public arena.

Gurung women have benefited most.

Social differentiation is clearly visible; the low caste and the poor Brahmin/Chhetri women/men have benefited the least. The conclusion that the life-styles of the general prosperity of the area and expand job opportunities is most telling. As such development programs must also be poverty-sensitive to reduce poverty.

Women’s economic opportunities can be increased on a large scale only through mainstreaming the gender perspective within sectoral programs. This is because development policies and programs impact on a large scale and cannot be reversed with small-scale individual project interventions. Individual projects should be promoted as catalysts, but they cannot solve the problem in a holistic manner. Acharya (1997), analyzing Nepal’s case summarizes the emerging gender issues at the sectoral level as follows:

ensuring adequate analysis of all programs and projects with a gender perspective;

gender sensitization of the implementation mechanism and machinery;

ensuring adequacy of measures initiated to ensure gender equity in project benefits; and

development of indicators and mechanisms, for a continuous monitoring and evaluation must be carried out in terms of not only their participation but their empowerment as wee. In the current paper’s perspective we may rewrite the points to incorporate ecology, ethnicity/caste and poverty sensitivity to sectoral programs.

Land rights and other facilities in project resettlement of families should be given serious consideration in those areas where such rights do not exit. Any assistance to resettled families and small business should include women on an equal basis.

As far as measurement of women’s contributions to GDP and economic welfare of the society goes Nepal is moving slowly to international standards. Efforts should be made to reflect the second part of the GDP scheme discussed above more fully. Measurement of the third party may constitute a separate exercise as suggested by SNA (1993). The recent labor force survey has made an effort to apply the new definitions in the classification of economic and non-economic activities. It also provides data on time devoted to household maintenance and child care activities. The forthcoming census also will adopt these new definitions.

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