An aspect which often gets low priority is improving economic and social condition of resource poor and oppressed sections of community such as women, landless and dalits. The productive roles of women and resource poor widely remains unnoticed or under reported in household or village economy. This is because most of rural village economy depends on land-based activities. Land defines social status and political power in the village and within household.

The project document for Phase II of Indo Swiss participative Watershed Development Project – Karnataka (ISPWDK) lists down the following expected results in this regard:

• Reduction of poverty through food security, increased income, employment opportunities and access to common property resources.
• Women have strengthened their capacities and have better access to and control over resources.

One of the three main approaches of the project is to “ enable marginal and oppressed sections of the village community (landless, small and marginal farmers, women) to gain maximum benefit from the project. Existing power relations based on caste, class and gender differences are addressed in order to offer improved livelihood opportunities to poor households in the watersheds. The project will offer these households opportunities for income generation through employment, preferential access to common property resources and non land-based activities”.

In ISPWDK, the wage payment for the watershed work is given to the labourer based on the quantity of work done, thus ensuring equal wages for equal work to both men and women. No contractor-ship and machine work are allowed in the watershed. While micro planning also, it is ensured that both male and female head of households are present to decide upon the requirements of work to be carried out in their land.

Women and oppressed sections are often not seen as resource decision makers, but as filling in the ‘quota’, they are either not given chance to voice their opinions or lack confidence due to no access to resource and information. The place and time of meeting, nature of other member’s present, interest and opportunity cost also determines their effective participation.

Our partner NGOs are working in remote and harsh conditions and they find it difficult to get and retain qualified female staff. Even it they find any, they are given ‘softer’ tasks of documentation, livelihood promotion and not watershed, agriculture etc, which are more ‘technical’, prominent and rewarding.

Each partner NGOs of ISPWDK have developed strategies and implemented specific focused interventions to integrate gender and equity. Under the project area, all the committees / institutions have 30-50% women representation. They have mixed experiences of female staff working on technical aspects.

Partner NGOs have formed People Technical Resource Groups (PTRG) / Community Resource Persons comprising of both male and female on support to community on technical aspects. They have also promoted men and women SHGs in the project villages. Grameen Mahila Arthika Seva Kendra (GMASK) of PRAWARDA & Munjavu Mahila Sahakar (MMS) of SAMUHA are few examples of women SHGs undertaking micro financial institutions / micro-enterprises. The partner NGOs have also identified “equity groups” comprising of differently able persons, women headed households, people with chronic illness, working children etc, to undertake focused interventions for their betterment.

Empowering women and oppressed sections without increasing their drudgery is a big challenge. Creating enabling environment, support from village community / NGO, continuous training and access to information / resources are most essential. In this regard, Programme Support & Management Unit (PSMU), Bangalore supports partner NGOs in addressing equity and gender in their project interventions through field visits, discussions and capacity building. Human & Institutional Development Forum (HIDF), Bangalore supports the project in capacity building to staff, animators, understanding gender in a holistic manner through gender profiles and accompaniment visits. Similarly, BASIX / IGS, Hyderabad also supports in systematic implementation of livelihoods promotion for landless & marginal farmers, provide technical, managerial and training support on pilot livelihoods intervention.

With the project in the middle of its phase and activities being implemented in full swing, it is right time to look back on experiences, challenges and lessons learnt on integrating gender and equity in ISPWDK.

Hence an Exchange Forum was organized on Gender & Equity in watershed context. The purpose was to mainly document the experiences and strengthen the project efforts to integrate gender and address equity in ISPWDK, to achieve the expected results. The partner NGOs of ISPWDK and Swiss Agency for Development & Cooperation / Intercooperation (SDC/IC) NGO Programme - Karnataka & Tamil Nadu will shared their experiences & challenges in this regard. This has enabled cross learning. The resource persons in this field are invited to share their rich experiences, schemes / guidelines within Government and strategies followed else where in India.

The outcome of the exchange forum on Gender and Equity will be shared shortly.