GSPIA

China’s land reform,

feminization of

agriculture and its

impact on agricultural

and rural development

Xintong Hou

2013/4/20

I. Executive Summary

Since 1978, China has experienced and is still experiencing major changes in its

economy, paralleled by transformations in its society and large-scale environmental

impacts. Basically, a generally accepted implication for the reform is that careful

balance of and trade-offs among economic growth, equity, poverty reduction and

natural resource management are needed if long-term sustainable development is to

be achieved. However, the reform has different socioeconomic impacts on different

groups of people depending on different factors, in this paper, gender. To be more

specific, the gender dimension of these changes is two sided. On the one hand, despite

the land reform, rural women’s land rights are still very limited. On the other hand,

out-migration from rural area to cities has resulted in a rapid and significant transfer

from agricultural to non-agricultural employment. As a result, feminization of

agriculture is coexisted with women’s lack of full land rights. To make things worse,

the access of these farming women to basic and natural resources and institutional

services, such as credit, market information, training and extension services, has also

been limited to a large extent. Given the fact that women are playing crucial roles but

still have an inferior status in many rural areas, this research paper aims to explore the

gender dimension of China’s land reform and its impacts on farming women, rural

livelihood and a sustainable agricultural and rural development, as well as agricultural

feminization and its policy implications.

At first section of the paper, I will briefly review current literature existed about

gender and natural resource management approaches/theories. Then For the second

section, I will at first introduce the history of China’s land reform. Based on that

historical background, I will then discuss status quo of women’s land rights in rural

China. And for the final part of this section, I will try to explore if feminization of

agriculture has become a trend in rural China and its impact on natural resource

management and agricultural development as well.

Finally, after examining both theories and facts, I will outline policy implications and

feasible policies to deal with land rights, land management and agriculture

development in rural China from a gender perspective.

II. Literature review of gender and natural resource management

The main purpose of this part is to review the current existed debates around gender,

environment and natural resource management as these have unfolded in response to a

widening engagement with environmental concerns within development policy

frameworks.

Basically there are two main strands of gender and environment theory: (1) liberal

correctives to gender-blind scholarship within development policy and practice, and

(2) relational perspectives that emphasize binary power relations between men and

women. The assumption behind both of the two theories is that men and women hold

gender-differentiated interests in natural resource management through their

distinctive roles, responsibilities and knowledge. In other words, gender is understood

as a critical variable in shaping processes of ecological change, viable livelihoods and

the prospects for sustainable development. Nevertheless, the latter perspective gives

more emphasis to the dynamics of gender, power relations between men and women

over resource access and control, and their concrete expressions in conflict,

cooperation and coexistence over environments and livelihoods.

Similarly, in the development policy world, there are three main approaches adopted

by developers when they make policy towards gender-dimensioned natural resource

management in the South. They are WED approach, WID approach and GED

approach.

WED (women, environment and development) posits natural connections between

women and environmental resources, treats women as the unrecognized caretakers of

the environment, and in whose care the Earth and its resources had better chances of

surviving for future generations (Dankelman and Davidson, 1988; Shiva, 1989; Rodda,

1991; Sontheimer, 1991). WED’s logic is that women are adversely affected by

environmental degradation due to an a priori gender division of labor. As a result,

women should then be targeted in conservation projects since their daily roles

connected them more closely to natural resources.

A number of scholars have identified problems associated with this theory/ approach.

At first, scholars have challenged the notion that women have fixed caretaker roles

and that they may become key assets to be harnessed in resource conservation

initiatives (Rocheleau, 1991; Leach, 1992, 1994). Secondly, Rao (1991) has argued

for the need to contextualize women as they dynamically respond to complex

environmental realities, and to consider how they enter into and engage in social

relationship s with men within the institutions of their natural resource-dependent

societies/ communities instead of a priori perceptions on women’s roles. Thirdly,

research has criticized that WED approach connotes a victim status of rural women

from the South. According to this critique, as the main victims of environmental

degradation, WED approach position women as the most appropriate participants in

environmental conservation, and thus a natural constituency for donor-initiated

resource protection conservation and regeneration (Dankelman and Davidson, 1988;

Shiva, 1989; Rodda, 1991; Sontheimer, 1991).

Another popular but also controversial approach is WID (women in development) that

treat women as a stand-alone homogeneous group with a set of static and predefined

roles that translated into their disadvantage social lives (Rathgeber, 1990).

Then with the transition of gender and development research, arguments have been

made for more context-specific and historically nuanced understandings of the

relationship of specific groups of women with specific environmental resources,

especially as these are mediated by their complex relations with men, kin and other

social actors. An early research that incorporates gender and its structuring, relational

and power dimensions was Jcakson (1993a, 1993b). She challenged the idea of

women as a natural constituency for environmental projects, underscoring the

contingent nature and fluidity of gender interests, and approach that has been

discussed more fully in debates regarding practical and strategic interests elsewhere in

the wider fiddle of gender and development (Molyneux, 1985; Moser, 1993; Wieringa,

1994). She proposed that analysis should focus on power relations between women

and men, and that women be treated as a disaggregated group of subjects as gender

roles are socially and historically constructed and being continually reformulated.

This approach as advocated by Jackson is the GED (gender, environment and

development) approach. Not like the former two approaches, this approach

emphasizes dynamic social and political relations and contextual analysis, rather than

universal assumptions and essentialist views of men’s and women’s engagement with

the environment.

Based on this approach, scholarship has engaged with a range of empirical concerns.

Work has centered on gendered property rights, such as water and land (Brunt, 1992;

Agarwal, 1994; Meinzen0Dick et al, 1997; von Benda-Beckmann et al, 1997;

Meinzen-Dick and Zwarteveen 1998); gender dynamics in local participation in

development programs and community-based institutions (Villareal, 1992; Mosse,

1994; Agarwal, 1997; Guijt and Shah, 1998; Cleaver, 2003; Colfer, 2005); the micor-

and macro-politics of collective action (Rocheleau et al, 1996); geographical mobility

(Elmhirst, 2002, 2002); gendered environmental knowledge (Fortmann, 1996; Jewitt,

2002; Howard, 2003; Momsen, 2007); livelihoods and resource use (Feldstein and

Poats, 1989; Leach, 1994; Deere, 1995); history (Leach and Green, 1997;

Resurreccion, 1999); and dynamics of gender in policy discourses and within

environmental departments of development agencies (Crewe and Harrison, 1998;

Kurian, 2000).

In recent years, debates in GED and also feminist political ecology have been taken in

new directions through the influence of a performative approach to gender associated

most notably with the feminist theorist Judith Butler (1990, 1994, 2004). This

approach allows masculinities and femininities to be regarded as a process:

fragmented, provisional and wrought through the interplay of culture, class,

nationality and other fields of power, and centrally through regulatory frameworks

such as normative heterosexuality. It challenges essentialist and binary views of

relations between men and women that may overemphasize difference and opposition,

and may essentialize particular patterns of gendered disadvantage (Jackson, 2006;

Cornwall, 2007).

The approach that I adopt in my research paper for rural women’s land rights and

feminization of agriculture in rural China is the general GED approach.

III. Women’s land rights in rural China and feminization of agriculture

1. Historical background: China’s land reform history

After coming into power in 1949, the Communist Party’s initial land reform gave

farmers full, private ownership of their small farms through a Land Reform Law and

other accompanying regulations. Through this law Land, titles or certificates of arable

lands were issued to farmers. This “land to the tiller” campaign lifted hundreds of

millions of poor Chinese out of destitution and hunger. Annual crop production

increased 70 percent from 113.2 million to 192.7 million tons between 1949 and1956.

Similarly, total farm income rose 85percent during the same period. However, in the

mid-1950s, China followed in the footsteps of the former Soviet Union and started the

collectivization of all farming. Private ownership of land became illegal. In 1958 the

situation was further exacerbated, with a move to giant “communes” and the

termination of the“private lots” that had allowed farmers to hold up to five percent of

the land privately, outside the collective-farming system. This movement finally led to

the Great Famine from 1958 and 1962, causing 15 to 30 million deaths. Finally,

modest reforms, beginning in 1962, ratcheted back the production unit from the

communes to village teams and restored private plots. Production then began a long,

slow recovery.

In the late 1970s, after Deng Xiaoping came into power, several regions of China

began to experiment with tearing down the collective farms and giving individual

farmers limited freedom to farm. Technically, the collectives retained ownership of

the land and allocated or “contracted out” land parcels to individual households for

private farming for a period of time. The land allocation was mostly in equal per

capita shares based on family size. The contracting households, in return, were

obligated to fulfill their “responsibilities” in harvest quotas or taxes to the collectives

every year. This scheme was called the “Household Responsibility System” or the

HRS. After its initial success, the experiment spread rapidly and became the

fundamental system of rural land tenure throughout China. The HRS was an

enormously successful reform, lifting the living standards of hundreds of millions of

rural people and was the driving force behind the single greatest poverty-reduction

achievement worldwide in the past three decades.

Despite the achievements of the HRS, several looming questions were left unresolved

and still remain. As a response, the Chinese government adopted a series of policies

and laws to address these issues. The most important four of them are the 1993 policy

directive issued by central government that extended farmers’ land-use rights to a

continuous and fixed term of 30 years; the 1998 revised Land Management Law that

embodied the 30-year policy in formal law for the first time; the 2002 Rural Land

Contracting Law which was devoted entirely to the relationship between collectives’

land-ownership rights and farmers’ land-use rights; and the 2007 Property Law, the

first comprehensive civil property code in modern Chinese history, in which

characterizes farmers ‘rural land-use rights as property rights or rights in rem.

2. Status quo of rural women’s land rights

In this section, I will at first briefly describe the formerly mentioned land reform’s

supposed influence on women’s land rights. And after that, I will also introduce the

reality of women’s land rights status quo in rural China.

Basically, there are three main land arrangements that have implications for women:

the HRS; the 1998 Land Management Law and the 2003 Land Contracting Law.

Firstly, as HRS aimed to grant households individual use right to land for terms of 15

years, it actually to some extent implied that every member of a farm household

would receive a piece of land of the same area. This shift to more individualized

rights transferred authority over women’s labor from the production team back to the

head of the household. And since it also allowed families to increase their revenues

from agricultural production so that led to increase in average household income, it is

probable that the HRS also helped women to gain some benefits.

Secondly, for the 1998 Land Management Law, there are several provisions in the law

that could change women’s land rights. The law sought to eliminate a significant

source of land tenure insecurity in China. Therefore, it means that over the next 30

years, families with sons will have to support new daughters-in-law without additional

land. Families with daughters, however, will retain excess land when their daughters

leave the household or village to marry.

Finally, the Land Contracting Law that came into effect in 2003 further strengthens

the rights of households. It states unequivocally that women and men should have

equal rights in respect to contracting land. Furthermore, Article 30 stipulates that

when a woman marries during the land contract term, the contract-issuing party

cannot take away her original contracted and unless she receives land in her marriage

village. When a woman is divorced or widowed, the contract-issuing party cannot

take away her land if she still lives at her current place of residence or moves to a new

place of residence where she cannot get land.

However, despite the stipulation of the formerly mentioned three policy arrangements,

the reality is very different. There are numerous case studies about women who lose

land during land reallocations, or as a result of changes in marital status. Li (2002)

outlines five situations where women might lose their land in her article. First, most

villages in rural China are patrilocal, which means women would move to their

husband’s village on marriage. Married-in women create a need for additional land for

the new household. Second, due to policy and legal restrictions against land

reallocations, women have increasing difficulty either obtaining land in their

husband’s village or retaining land in the village of their birth. Third, in the absence of

land reallocations, the position of women is different from that of men. Unlike men,

who can inherit land use rights in their village of birth, women cannot do so, since

they move to their husband’s village upon marriage, and hence upon marriage

effectively become landless. Fourth, in many villages, girls who do not marry at the

customary age fact growing discrimination in land allocations. They are allocated a

smaller share of land than men or no land at all. Finally, women who are widowed or

divorced fact growing difficulty in retaining land in their husband’s village or being

allocated land in their village of birth. 1

In their article Women’s Land Rights in Rural China: Current Situation and Likely

Trends, Linxiu Zhang, Chengfang Liu et al studies women’s land rights based on two

sets of data---one collected at the village level (“the village data set”) and the other

collected at the small group level (“the small group dataset”). Based on their datasets,

they examine the land rights of three sub-groups of women: newly married, divorced

and widowed.

For newly married women, it has become increasingly difficult for them to get land in

their marriage villages in rural China. In their survey, 48 per cent of village leaders

claim that in their villages newly married women could not get any land at all in 1998.

However, by 2004 this number has climbed to 55 percent. At the same time, married

women also have difficulty retaining their land in their natal villages. Their village

survey shows that when a woman is either divorced or widowed, her share of land is

treated in one of three ways: either it is retained by the woman automatically, or it is

1 Li Zongmin. Women’s Land Rights in Rural China”, consultant’s report, Commissioned by Ford Foundation in Beijing.. 2002.

taken back by the village, or it is treated along with her residence registration. 2

For divorced women, based on their survey, 74 percent of village leaders responded

that divorced women retained their land in 1998 while in 2004 this number went up to

82 percent. 3

For widowed women, their data show that during the sample period, in almost all

villages, which are 98 percent, widowed women kept their land.

To summarize their finding, they find that villages with relatively more land, a larger

part of land under collective management, a larger number of women on the village

committee and more frequent land reallocations have relatively fewer landless women.

Villages that need land reallocation approval from the town ship government have a

relatively higher proportion of landless women. 4

3. Feminization of agriculture in rural China and its impact on environment and rural

development

In this part, I will at first try to explore if feminization of agriculture does exist as a

trend in recent years based on two available researches. Then I will try to analyze its

impact on natural resource management, rural environment and rural development.

Parallel with women’s land rights situation in rural China, the land reform has also

brought a debate about the increasing participation of women in agriculture in rural

China. Jacka (1997) quotes county officials in Sichuan talking about the “feminization”

of the agricultural labor force. Feminization of agriculture would be a significant

2 Linxue Zhang, Chengfang Liu et al. Women’s Land Rights in Rural China: Current Situation and Likely Trends. Chapter 5 of Gender and Natural Resource Management: Livelihoods, Mobility and Interventions. 14 Feb 2011. 3 The same as above 4 Linxue Zhang, Chengfang Liu et al. Women’s Land Rights in Rural China: Current Situation and Likely Trends. Chapter 5 of Gender and Natural Resource Management: Livelihoods, Mobility and Interventions. 14 Feb 2011.

social trend with far-reaching implications. Also, how women (and men) experience

this increasing feminization of agriculture, especially in the current context of

increasing commercialization of agriculture, becomes an important question.

The term "feminization of agriculture" is first used by Boserup in 1970. Since then,

the trend has been increased rapidly which is mainly linked to the expansion of wage

employment that accompanies economic development and globalization. (Ashiby,

1985, Jiggins, 1998, Price, 1999, Song, 1998).

While the process of agricultural feminization is complicated and the consequences

are multi-dimensional, several authors are concerned about a number of the potential

effects. Song (1998) is concerned that women are being forced to work more hours

and take on increased responsibilities, which supposedly reduces their utility. Katz

(2003) worries that there could be negative effects on the income of women since

women likely will have less access to resources—such as high quality land and credit.

If women are being denied opportunities to participate in the “modern” wage earning

sector and are relegated to working on the farm, the more indirect link between effort

and income from farm activities reduces their status (Gao, 1994). A study by the

UNDP (2001) raises the concern that if women took over the farm, productivity might

fall to the point that it could threaten national food security.

In part due to the perception that these concerns are valid, agricultural feminization

has become an important topic in the literature on China’s drive for modernization.

Despite the absence of large scale studies, most published studies of the role of gender

in China’s agriculture argue the agricultural feminization is happening—especially in

China’s poor areas (Song and Jiggins 2000; UNDP 2003; Song and Zhang 2004).

Jacka (1997) quotes county officials in Sichuan as saying that they believe agriculture

is being feminized. Rawski and Mead (1998) produce aggregate trends at the

provincial level suggesting that women are taking over farm work in China.

But there are several problems with former studies. For one thing, most studies treat

rural women as if they all belong to a single group, instead of understanding that the

behavior of women in different cohorts or as members of different families may differ

markedly. For another, few studies have attempted to quantify certain key issues, such

as the degree to which women have participated in on farm activities, especially

vis-à-vis men. 5

Recently, a paper (Yiching Song, Linxiu Zhang, 2009) presents the research results of

gender study in agricultural and natural resource management in South-west China.

The research is based on the field data of a Social Analysis and Gender Analysis

(SAGA) research,6 which was built on and analyzed in 4 existing rural development

action research projects in Southwest China in the past decade. The key findings of

the research are: 1) the subsistence farming in China are experiencing transformation

or crises, agricultural income become less and less percentage in rural household

5 Zhang, Linxiu; Rozelle, Scott; Liu, Chengfang; Olivia, Susan; de Brauw, Alan; Li, Qiang. 2006. Feminization of Agriculture in China : Debunking the Myth and Measuring the Consequence of Women Participation in Agriculture. © World Bank, Washington, DC. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/9103 License: CC BY 3.0 Unported 6 The SAGA research was built on 4 existing rural development action research projects: “Rural Livelihood Security and Policy Change--Enhancing Community-based Crop Development, Natural Resource Management and Farmer Empowerment in Guangxi, South-West China” implemented by the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Chinese Academy of Science since 2000; “Community-based Natural Resource Management in Mountainous Areas of Guizhou Province” implemented by Guizhou Academy of Agricultural Sciences (GAAS) since 1998; “Poverty Reduction through Participatory Technology Dissemination” implemented by Yunnan University since 2000 in Yunnan; and “Enhancing the Livelihoods of Agro-pastoralists in NW Yunnan” implemented by the Center for biodiversity and Indigenous Knowledge (CBIK) since 2000. It has followed a comprehensive social and gender analysis approach and used a common research framework, combining both quantitative and qualitative research methods

income, farmers are losing interest in farming, feminization and ageing of agricultural

labor is severe and increasing, women and old people have become the key

agricultural cultivators. 2).Under these changes gender inequalities is deepening, in

terms of resource and opportunity access, reinforced by conservative cultural norms

and existing institutional systems, and intensified by impact of forces including

globalization and marketization. 3). gender mutual policies like land tenure etc and

gender insensitive supporting services like extension and credit have affected

women’s equal employment in and benefit from the economic growth. 4). Farming

women can be organized into effective women groups for technology development

and market linkage with appropriate support from public research and extension

agencies. Such intervention could greatly empower women and increase their access

to technology, credit and market in a sustainable way.

Based on the findings, the rationale and impact of feminization of agriculture could be

concluded as the following: China’s major economic and social transformations have

changed the structure of agriculture and rural households. To be more specific,

subsistence farming is in crises meanwhile scale enlargement of agriculture for

commercialization is happening. This new context has shaped the transformation and

reconstruction of the gender division of labor within the households. As a result,

externalization of costs has been brought onto women who are staying with farming

and maintaining their land for livelihood security. At the same time, specialization and

mono-cropping driven by the commercial forces has increased farming women’s

dependency on pesticides and fertilizers with externalization of costs to environment.

Biodiversity and other natural resources are in degradation and traditional intensive

farming culture is losing due to labor constraints, low return of agriculture and market

forces. 7

Another useful research (Linxiu Zhang, Scott Rozelle, Chengfang Liu, 2006) turns to

farming and seek to answer the question “Is agriculture in China being feminized” by

using large, national-level data sets. Their main metrics: a.) An increasing number of

women who at some time in the past did not participate in on-farm work and now do

(participation measure); b.) A rising number of hours worked on the farm (hours

measure); and c.) A rising share of hours of farmwork done by women within the

household relative to men (household share measure).

Still another, this trend is clearly shown in a recent CCAP study of 200 randomly

selected farmer households in three poor provinces: Anhui, Qinghai and Guangxi.

There has been an overall increase in out-migration in terms of number of households

affected, number of people migrating, and the length of time spent in off-farm jobs.

For example, in 1997, migrants came from 84 households; this number increased to

101 in 1999 and jumped to 174 in 2001, with a further increase to 196 in 2003. The

same study also reported the overall trend in out-migration by sex between 1997 and

2003. It showed that women's out-migration is limited and, although it has increased

over this period, it is far smaller than men's. 8

7 Yiching Song., Linxiu Zhang., Dajiang Sun., Qiu Sun., Janice Jiggins., Feminization of agriculture in rapid changing rural China: policy implication and alternatives for an equitable growth and sustainable development. Paper presented at the FAO-IFAD-ILO Workshop on Gaps, trends and current research in gender dimensions of agricultural and rural employment: differentiated pathways out of poverty Rome, 31 March - 2 April 2009. 8 Yiching Song, Y., L. Zhang., and Ropnnie Vernooy. Empowering Women Farmers and Strengthening the Local

Seed System: action research in Guangxi, China, chapter 5 in book “”Social and Gender Analysis in Natural Resource Management: Learning Study and Lesson from Asia” Edited by Ronnie Vernooy, joint published by Sage, IDRC and China Agricultural Press. 2006.

Based on findings of all these researches, it is evident that the feminization of

agriculture has increased in the last decade in rural China, especially in the poor areas.

There are several major impacts of the feminization of agriculture on natural resource

management and environment.

First of all, as predominantly small farmers, women have been largely responsible for

activities such as the selection, improvement and adaptation of plant varieties. As a

result, the feminization of agriculture in rural China has both supported and increased

agricultural biodiversity.

Secondly, it also will impact food security. Actually, erosion of genetic diversity of

crops, especially food crops, is a very serious concern in China. The assessment of

food security revealed that bio-diversity loss is one of the new challenges facing

China in its attempt to ensure food security for the future (Huang 2003).

Finally, women’s increasing role in agriculture will also impact crop productivity,

poverty alleviation and rural development. Internationally, women-headed households

and women-cultivated plots have produced lower yields and revenues (World Bank,

2001). Women are less efficient producers for a variety of reasons (Saito et al., 1994;

Quisumbing, 1994). However, in rural China, the earnings and productivity of farms

have not suffered with the feminization of agriculture (Zhang, 2006).

Although the government recognizes the phenomenon of the feminization of

agriculture and knows that women are becoming the poorest among the poor, it has

made little effort to do anything about this situation. The government has initiated

some poverty alleviation and related programs, but the cross-cutting nature of the

gender issues and the crucial roles women are playing in bio-diversity management,

food security, poverty alleviation and rural development have still not been fully

recognized and addressed.

IV. Policy implications and feasible policies

A study conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 1990 revealed

that in developing countries women provide 70% of agricultural labor, 60–80% of

labor for household food production, 100% for processing basic foodstuffs, 80% for

food storage and transport from farm to village, 90% for water and fuel-wood

collection for households (Uma Rani, 1999). Despite growing recognition of women’s

dominance over men in terms of use and management of natural resources, their

contribution is still undervalued ( The Hindu, 2004; WHO, 2000) as evidenced by the

perpetuation of gender-blind policies and programs.

Also, as aforementioned, the challenge for governments is to structure a response to

the fundamental changes taking place at global, national and local levels, and to

ensure that gender concerns are not lost in the flux of changing priorities. In order to

meet this challenge, it is therefore useful to examine previous efforts as well as learn

from past mistakes.

For China, the important policy implication, which could be withdrawn from the

formerly mentioned research, is that feminization of agriculture phenomenon matters

because of women’s limited access to productive assets and social capital for their

new roles of producers. It matters because women’s role in agriculture remains largely

unrecognized in policy, resource allocation and institutional support to women. it is

very clear that as feminization of agriculture has emerged, without compensating

measures, appropriate gender sensitive policies and public supporting services for

farming women, there will be a continuous degradation of the environment and the

natural resources as well as deterioration in rural women’s statuses. This, in turn,

will negatively affect the well-being of rural households, especially those women

headed ones that rely on agriculture for their livelihoods, and also have negative effect

on China’s sustainable agricultural and rural development.

Therefore, in the future, particular attention should be given to the government’s roles

and more appropriate and supportive policies, institutional settings, mechanism and

actions are needed to meet the needs and interests of the farming women and improve

the quality of their participation in marginal and unfavorable areas in China.

To be more specific, from the strategic perspective, gender mainstreaming, which is

the current international approach to advancing gender equality and equity in society,

should also be selected as the general strategy of policy makers in China.

Theoretically, gender mainstreaming, as a strategy, has developed out of a major shift

away from the WID (women in development) approach towards the GAD (gender and

development) approach. It focuses on the fact that women and men have different life

courses and that development policies affect them differently. It addresses these

differences by taking gender into account in development planning at all levels and in

all sectors. Its focus is less on providing equal treatment for men and women and

more on taking whatever steps are necessary to ensure that men and women benefit

equally. It recognizes that the empowerment of women can only be achieved by

taking into account the relationships between women and men. Practically, at the level

of national government, this strategy means to incorporate a gender perspective into

all policies, plans, programs and projects to ensure that these impact on women and

men in an equitable way. 9

From the tactical perspective, China could and should adopt the community-based

natural resource management (CBNRM) approach which is widely used by many

other Asia countries. Today, in developing countries all over the world, as rural

women rely heavily on natural resources for the survival of their families, the

deterioration in the natural resource base is threatening rural livelihoods. Due to

population pressure and lack of awareness, rural women tend to exploit land, water

and forest resources without considering the needs of future generations, thereby

running the risk of eventually becoming part of the vicious downward spiral of hunger,

poverty and suffering. However, there are many cases where communities have been

organized to practice sustainable use of available natural resources, as explained by

the community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) approach. As a result,

first of all, one policy should be adopted by Chinese central and local governments is

to implement capacity-building of women through education, and through providing

user-friendly technologies and employment opportunities. Improved education of

rural women can play a key role not only in reversing the trend of unsustainable

exploitation of natural resources.

9 Gender Mainstreaming in Agriculture and Rural Development: A Reference Manual for Governments and Other Stakeholder. Commonwealth Secretariat. P4

The second policy should be adopted is to establish women’s group to increase

women’s currently limited opportunities to participate in manage-level agricultural

decision making process and to decrease the domination of men’s authority in

possessing land rights and making decisions. For example, women should be involved

in village level meetings to make or revise grassroots co-management agreements and

rules so that they could also reflect their ideas, perceptions and interests. Another

advantage of forming women’s group is that women could then have more

opportunities to cooperate, learn from each other, exchange experiences, and share

knowledge and information. Finally, the existence of the women’s group could also

encourage women's initiatives to protect land and environment according to

traditionally inherited knowledge and customs.

The final policy should be to make access to credit, better equipment and more

advanced technologies more available to women. This is feasible because currently, in

global level, the pressure to advance gender equality and equity, exerted through

documents such as the UNCED Agenda 21 which called for better access to all forms

of credit, access to property rights, and technology, has ensured that there are

sufficient budget lines and credit funds available for changes to take place and for

women’s farming to flourish equitably.

An existed example of these efforts is a project, coordinated by CCAP a leading

agricultural policy research institution that is part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

CCAP project aims to identify technological and institutional options for developing

more effective linkages and mutually beneficial partnerships between the formal and

farmers' seed systems to enhance sustainable crop development and in situ or on-farm

management of genetic resources, and to bring direct benefits to poor maize producers.

At the same time, the project aims to strengthen women and men farmers' capacities

to manage agrobiodiversity and improve their livelihoods (CCAP 1999, 2003).

Moreover, there may be some lessons for the rest of the world on what policies and

institutions to help to empower women to gain equal access to land, open access to

credit as they becoming major players in agriculture so as to ensure rural development

as well as biodiversity in rural China.

References

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