Gender Mainstreaming and Women Empowerment in Small Holdings

Abstract

Development approaches in modern agriculture are not always gender neutral and affect women and men in different ways. Women are indispensably involved in agriculture, but their contribution tends to be overseen; they never get the recognition as women farmers. Resource-poor small farm women spend their time in farming activities along with household chores. Apart from this, women face obstacles of social norms, patriarchal institution, and lack of land entitlement in their pathway. These lead toward the need for gender mainstreaming. Gender mainstreaming is the way of incorporating the gender perspective into the mainstream activities at all levels. Mainstreaming can generate a need for adjustments in strategies and activities to assure that both women and men can equally influence, take part in, and obtain benefit from the development process by bringing women's issues into mainstream government agriculture policies-programs for building a balanced society. Gender mainstream can be realized involving the stages of preparation, design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of policies. Hence, gender-sensitive tools and strategies are implemented to help in creating gender balance in the agrarian sector. Presently, group approach like Self-Help Group (SHG) is doing well in women's capacity building and income generation. This chapter presents different perspectives of gender and social equity trade-offs, especially in the small holding agriculture sector. Opportunities and potential pathways for mitigating gender imbalances are also discussed here.