Gender Roles in Rural Communities of Nepal

This paper aims to analyze gender roles in agriculture in terms of physical and decision making involvement. Involvement was studied in the context of actual physical labor and decision making of both men and women of two rural communities representing different agro-ecological zones. Gender involvement was determined by actual physical labor in mean working hours. Roles in agriculture basically encompass rice and livestock production and operation of micro enterprise. Correlation analysis was used to analyze the extent of association among selected influencing factors and women's physical involvement. Moreover, the study explained the influencing and related factors in gender roles and needs and constraints in rural women's socio-economic development. The study found significant roles of women in rice and livestock production in both upland and lowland ecosystems. However, women were less involved in micro- enterprises. In contrary to physical involvement women were seen to be less involved in decision making process in rice production and micro enterprise. Finally, the paper examined several influencing factors, studied in both communities, which showed significant effects in gender roles.