Northern Community-Managed Irrigation Sector Project

Project targets aimed at including vulnerable groups (women and ethnic groups) should be based on a thorough understanding of realities and local institutional capacity. In the project's gender action plan, the goal of reducing rice deficits was to be achieved by having women constitute 50% of farmers. Since rural women by tradition are fully active in farming, the 50% target was irrelevant. Moreover, there is no logical link between rice deficits and the number of female farmers. Similarly, the goal of achieving equality of extension staff by gender and/or ethnic group should have recognized local budgetary and human resource constraints.