Role of Rural Women In Poverty Alleviation Through Keeping of Livestock

40 Pages·2002·0.41 MB·English

by  Hamdani, L.

Role of Rural Women In
Poverty Alleviation Through
Keeping of Livestock

Prepared by:
Liaqat Ali Shah Hamdani,
Participant of 82nd Advance Course in
Public Sector Management.
National Institute of Public Administration,
Lahore.
Table of Contents

Page No.
Acknowledgement 1

Introducction 2

Chapter 1 Poverty In Rural Areas 4

1.1 What is Poverty? Definition 4
1.2 Spread & Extent 5
1.3 Women and Poverty 8
1.4 Poverty in Rural Areas 9
1.5 Women in Rural Economy 10

Chapter 2 Importance Of Livestock Sector In 12
Rural Economy And Poverty Reduction

2.1 Livestock & National Scenario 12
2.2 Economic Prospects 15
2.3 Role of Women in keeping of Livestock 18

Chapter 3 Government Strategies To Uplift Rural 20
Women Through Keeping Of Livestock

3.1 Policy Overview 20
3.2 Rural Support Programmes (RSPs) 21
3.3 Micro Finance Institutions 29
3.4 Projects Completed 30
3.5 On-going Projects 32
3.6 Further Steps Taken – Provision of Animals 32
through District Zakat Committees
3.7 Training for the Women 33
3.8 Development Projects 33

Chapter 4 How Women Help Reduce Proverty 35
Through Livestock – A Case Study On PRSP

4.1 Punjab Rural Support Programme (PRSP) 35
4.2 Why Micro Credit? 36
4.3 Women and Credit 36
4.4 Role of Women in Livestock Department 37
4.5 Statistical Overview of PRSP Credit 38
4.6 Economic Impacts 38
4.7 Social Impacts 40

Chapter 5 Conclusions and Recommendations 43

Bibliography 46
Acknowledgement

In conducting the research and preparing this paper, I acknowledge the
valuable contributions made by Doctor Amjad Saqib, a D.M.G Officer
presently working as Regional Manager PRSP Lahore region without his
active support it was not possible to identify the strategies required to
uplift the plight of rural women.

Special thanks to Mr. Ikhlaq Ahmad Tarar Secretary Livestock, and Dairy
Development Government of the Punjab a resource person who helped to
know the importance of Livestock sector in National Economy.

I also thank Ms. Rehana Samad for guiding on various issues while
conducting the research and writing the research paper.
Introduction

Pakistan is an Agriculture, country and incom from agriculture is
roughly one fourth of G.D.P – Pakistan’s economy is still Agro based and
its growth rate is largely influenced by the Productively of Agriculture
sector. Besides that Pakistan is a highly populous country and is
catagorised as a low income developing country and according to the
latest UNDP report 2002, Pakistan occupies 138th psition out of 173
countries in terms of Human Development index. Incidence of poverty
has increase manifold with the rapid increase in population and roughly
35% of the population of our country lives below the poverty line.
Majority of the population dwells is rural areas and incidence of poverty
is very high in rural areas as compared to urban centres. Half of the
population of rural areas consists of woman folk. Various strategies are
required to uplift the plight of rural population and to help them get out
of this vicious circle of poverty. Empowering women to earn more
through an institutional arrangement in various fields can be a very
significant step towards poverty alleviation.

Livestock is a very important sub-sector of the Agro rural economy and
makes up 37.7 percent cent of the agriculture income and 9.3 percent
of G.D.P. It is the second largest contributor to agriculture sector after
crops.

By active policy attention strengthen and expanding Micro-Credit
support programmes and encouraging private sector participation and
specially targeting rural women who already are totally involving in
livestock activity, the burden of poverty can be lessened.

In the following chapters an effort has been made to link the above
factors and to examine the various strategies and to draw a conclusion.
CHAPTER - 1

POVERTY IN RURAL AREAS

1.2 What is Poverty? Definition

Poverty constitutes biggest challenge in South Asia, especially in
the countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and India where millions
of people are forced to live in abject conditions. Defining this
elusive concept has always remained a problem. Governments,
Private Organizations and various professionals have tried to
define poverty but no such attempt has fully captured the
dimensions in which it manifests itself. Poverty is not merely
income deprivation as commonly understood. It is a
multidimensional concept, which encompasses economic, political
and social deprivation that are since qua non for a meaningful
existence. The basic human needs include a desire to lead a long
and healthy life, to be educated and to achieve a certain level of
material well being. Other needs such as access to job
opportunities, job security and political and social freedom are
equally essential but more difficult to capture and quantify.
Although insufficient financial resources is a more pronounced
phenomenon, but poor also lack access to basic needs such as
education, health, clean drinking water, and proper sanitation.
This limited access undermines their capabilities, limits their
ability to secure gainful employment, and results in income poverty
and social and political exclusion. This cycle s further exacerbated
when institutions of governance tend to exclude the most
vulnerable from the decision-making process and push them in the
quagmire of poverty and human deprivation. Denial of basic
human choices diminishes the possibility for the betterment of
human lives. It is this very denial that both makes and keeps
people poor and vulnerable. Hence, in its broader perspective
poverty is defined as denial of opportunity and inability of people
to make choices and take decisions that effect their lives.

1.2 Spread & Extent

The burden of poverty is spread unevenly among the regions and
countries of world. Within region and countries, the poor are
often concentrated in urban slums or in far flung rural areas.
When choices and opportunities are denied on the basis of
location, ethnicity, social class, political affiliation, or religious
orientation, the weight of poverty falls most heavily on certain
groups. Amongst these groups women in general are most
disadvantaged and isolated. In poor households, they often
shoulder more of the workload than men, are less educated and
have less access to remunerative activities. Girls, too, suffer
disproportionately and the future quality of their lives is comprised
by inadequate nutrition, health care and education. Nearly half of
the work’s poor, live in South Asia, a region that accounts for
roughly 30% of world’s population. In Pakistan 42 million people
or roughly 30 percent of the population are income poor; 47
million adults or 62 percent of the adult population cannot read or
write, 76 percent of the female adult population is illiterate; 8
million children are out of school; 61 million people or 45 percent
of the population have no access to safe drinking water; 54 million
people or 40 percent of the population have no access to even basic
health services; 72 million people or 53 percent of the population
have no access to sanitation; 9 million children under the age of 5
or 38 percent of the under 5 population are malnourished
( ). An analysis of poverty by socio-economic groups
reveals following facts of poverty in Pakistan
( ).
1. Poverty in Pakistan has remained fairly stable during the
1990s, from 29.3% in 1993-94 to 32.2% in 1998-99,
but from then onward there has been sharp increase in its
incidence.

2. Poverty is considerably higher in rural as compared to urban
areas. According to calculations by FBS bases on PIHS data,
poverty headcount in 1998-99 was 36.3% and 22.4% for
rural and urban areas of Pakistan, respectively. Poverty
incidences vary significantly between provinces. NWFP has
the highest rural as well as urban poverty followed by
Punjab. Balochistan data for 1998-99 shows relatively low
poverty, however, poverty in Balochistan is as high as in
NWFP as in other years.

3. The poor have a higher dependency ratio, as households
with a large number of children, and single earning member,
are more likely to be poor. On average, the poor have almost
five household members less than 18 years of age, While the
number for the non-poor is three. Average number of
births by a poor woman (married and of age 15-49) is almost
five, compared to four for a non-poor woman.

4. More than one third of the poor households are headed by
aged persons who are dependent on transfer incomes, such
as pensions and other forms of social support.

5. Education is the most important factor that distinguishes
the poor from the non-poor. The percentage of literate
household heads is 27 poor households while for non-poor
households it is 52.

6. The poor are also characterized by relatively low access to
health related infrastructure, like sanitation. While 76% of
the poor live in households with no toilet with flush,
compared to 53% of the non-poor. The poor are also less
likely to have access to electricity and gas – 60% and 10 % of
the poor live in households with electricity and gas
connections, compared to 75% and 24% of the non-poor,
respectively.

7. Relatively poor communities also seem to have less access to
health facilities and immunization coverage. 45% of the
children in poor households aged one to five years have been
fully immunized as against 58% in non-poor households.

8. Poverty is (relatively) higher when head of the households are
unskilled agricultural workers, engaged in services,
transport, production, and sales occupation.

9. The non-poor own 0.84 acres of cultivable land per capita,
while the poor own only 0.27 acres per capita. In addition
the poor are less able to diversify their agricultural
production and are thus more susceptible to economic
shocks.

1.3 Women and Poverty

In terms of gender break-ups Pakistani females are much more
deprived than their male counterparts in all areas. Women in
Pakistan have seen virtually no change in the general condition of
their lives. Improvements have been slow throughout last fifty
years and have displayed little variation in pace. Women’s health
indicators have shown the most improvement while education has
lagged behind. Today, 29 percent of women are deprived of
health whereas an alarming 72 percent as against 47 percent of
men are deprived of education. More than half the women in
Pakistan are plagued by poverty of opportunities compared to a
little over a third of men. Clearly, the bulk of human poverty in
Pakistan has a ‘women’s face’. What is indeed worrying is that
gender gaps for all indicators have risen over the last 25 years. If
poverty reduction is to be the goal of any national policy, women
will need to be specially targeted.

1.4 Poverty in rural areas?

The incidence of poverty in rural areas has almost always been
higher than in the urban areas of Pakistan and three-quarters of
the country’s poor live in rural areas. It is also a fact that the
severity of poverty is greater in rural than urban areas. This is
clearly reflected by the differences in (a) the average level of
household income and consumption and (b) the availability of
public sector infrastructure, subsidies, and services. Perhaps the
most important piece of evidence on rural poverty is that nearly
two-thirds of the rural poor are working agriculture as small
owner-operators, share cropping tenants, and laborers. Based on
the findings of recent studies several generalizations
can be made about the incidence of poverty in rural Pakistan (
).

(cid:190) The rural landless – share cropping tenants and wage
worker – represent a majority of those who can be
regarded a functionally vulnerable, and a high proportion
of them are living in poverty.

(cid:190) While not all, the rural landless are without other assets,
such as livestock and some skills, those who depend on
manual labor may be experiencing particularly severe
poverty. Agricultural laborers and low-skill manual
workers are perhaps the most vulnerable groups in the
rural society.

(cid:190) Small, resource-poor farmers account for perhaps one-
third of the functionally vulnerable in the rural
population. Their dependence on wage labor has become
an important source of household income.

(cid:190) Among the owners and operators of land, including
tenants, some 75-80 percent of the household income is
generated in agriculture. However considering the total
rural population, more than one-half of the income of
low-income households now comes from non-agricultural
sources, particularly non-farm wages.

1.5 Women in Rural Economy

Role of women in rural economy has never been appreciated to its
fuller extent. Evidence from micro studies has shown that women
in this sector undertake a wide range of activities both in the filed
and at home (Freedman and Wai 1988; Masood 1988; Ali et al.
2986). Their involvement in farm work is lowest in the earlier
stages of crop production when field preparation is largely
undertaken by men but in the later stages of the production cycle
in the harvesting and post harvesting phase their participation is
very high. Home based post harvest operations such as drying,
cleaning and storage of grains are almost exclusively carried out by
women. Their contribution is also significant in seed preparation,
collecting farm yard manure, weeding, harvesting, and various
other farm operations. The extent of female participation in field
work varies by crop and is particularly high in the case of rice,
cotton and vegetables.

Livestock production is largely a woman’s job and, according to
the few available time allocation studies, accounts for a large
proportion of their day. Estimates of time spent on livestock
related activities range between 3 to 5 hours per day (Khan and
Bilquees 1976; Freedman and Wai 1988). Women take primary
responsibility for cutting fodder, cleaning sheds, processing of
animal products, of disease identification, and care of sick