Enhancing women's access and ownership of livestock

In many developing countries, women provide much of the labour for livestock tasks. Yet their role in livestock production has been undervalued by policymakers and research on this issue widely ignored.

In many countries, women are often denied ownership rights for large stock (cattle, camels, horses), but 'allowed' to keep small stock (sheep, goats, rabbits, poultry). Reasons include:

• Livestock ownership patterns are linked to social class, religious systems and paternalistic cultures – this means women have weaker ownership rights than men, especially in times of stress.
• The migration of men to find seasonal work makes it harder for women in their households to use land, or access credit and technical inputs for livestock production.

In Nepal, local women doing extension work, and their supporters in the Department of Forests, were able to change male foresters’ attitudes about women in livestock production

Women's empowerment in Nepal

There are examples of women becoming empowered in livestock production. The Hills Leasehold Forestry and Forage Development Project in Nepal, which leased degraded forest for livestock food production, managed to improve women's bargaining power within communities and government institutions. Local women doing extension work, and their supporters within the Department of Forests, were able to change male foresters' attitudes about women's capacities in livestock production and roles as community leaders.

Further actions can enhance women's roles in livestock production:

• More female extension agents must be trained, requiring an end to restrictive college entrance and employment procedures.
• People designing new livestock technologies must consider the potential impact on women's status and economic control of resources. Until women have stronger ownership rights to larger stock, developments with small stock have the most potential; bee and silkworm-keeping are also potentially lucrative.

More widely, development planners and livestock officers must change their thinking and do more to support women in livestock production. For example, they should work more with women's organisations and make capital available to women for income-generating activities.

Jeannette Gurung and Kanchan Lama
Jeannette Gurung, Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management (WOCAN), Ithaca, New York, USA
jeannettegurung@wocan.org