The Role of Gender in the Home Garden Management and Benefit-
Sharing from Home Gardens in Different Production System of Nepal
Anu Adhikari, Deepa Singh, Rojee Suwal, Pratap Shrestha and Resham Gautam
ABSTRACT
The maintenance and management of activities in home garden are highly gender based.
The gender roles also depend on the ethnic and cultural setting of the community. However,
in depth understanding of the importance and influence of gender to the management of
home gardens is lacking in Nepalese context. A study was conducted in Dudrakshya village
of Rupandehi district and Durbar Devisthan village of Gulmi district in order to identify the
gender role under different socio-economic categories (rich, medium and poor) of farmers in
management and benefit sharing from home gardens. The data was collected through Focus
Group Discussions. Separate Focus Group Discussions for each categories farmer including
male and female farmers in each eco site were conducted. The finding showed that in Gulmi,
both male and female were equally responsible in overall home garden management in all
categories but in decision making for homegarden management the role of male and female
differed according to categories. It was found that male and female were equally responsible
in rich and medium categories but in poor category females were more responsible for home
garden management. Both genders were equally benefited in rich category whereas male in
medium and children in poor category were more benefited from home garden. But male and
female equally control over the benefits from home garden in rich, male controlled more in
medium and female controlled more in poor category. In Rupandehi, female were more
responsible and prime decision maker for home garden management in indigenous group
but both gender were equally responsible in labour division as well as decision making in
migrant group. Male have more access to resources and control of resources than female in
both area and ethnicity. Benefit derived from home garden was higher in male in medium
and poor categories of migrant group and rich and medium categories of indigenous group
whereas rich migrants group and poor indigenous group female were more benefited. But
the controlled of benefit from home garden was higher in male in both rich and medium
category whereas female in poor category.
Key words: Decision-making, gender, Gender role, home garden
INTRODUCTION
Agriculture is predominantly women’s activity in rural Nepal. Agricultural sector still shares a
large portion in the national economy. Women are contributing major portion (55-88 %)
compared to men (40.80 %) to the National agriculture labour (WFDD, 2001). Gender is the
socially constructed roles and responsibilities assigned to men and women in a given
culture/ location and the societal structures that support them. Gender roles are the assigned
activities and relative position in society for men and women. Gender analysis refers to the
variety of methods used to understand the relationships between men and women, their
access to resources, their activities, and the constraints they face relative to each other.
From an ecological and land use perspective, home gardens involve the management of
multipurpose trees, shrubs, annual and perennial agricultural crops, herbs, spices, medicinal
plants, fish ponds and animals on the same land unit, in a spatial arrangement or on a
temporal sequence (Eyzaguirre and Linares, 2004). In Nepal, Home garden refers to the
traditional land used practices around a homestead where several species of plants are
planted and maintained by member of the household and their products are intended
primarily for household consumption. They are locally termed as bari in terai and gharbari in