Gender and governance in rural services: insights from India, Ghana, and Ethiopia

As the first output from the gender and
governance in rural services project, this report presents
descriptive findings and qualitative analysis of
accountability mechanisms in agricultural extension and
rural water supply in India, Ghana, and Ethiopia, paying
specific attention to gender responsiveness. The gender and
governance in rural services project seeks to generate
policy-relevant knowledge on strategies to improve
agricultural and rural service delivery, with a focus on
providing more equitable access to these services,
especially for women. The project focuses on agricultural
extension, as an example of an agricultural service, and
drinking water, as an example of rural service that is not
directly related to agriculture but is of high relevance for
rural women. A main goal of this project was to generate
empirical micro level evidence about the ways various
accountability mechanisms for agricultural and rural service
provision work in practice and to identify factors that
influence the suitability of different governance reform
strategies that aim to make service provision more gender
responsive. Three out of four poor people in the developing
world live in rural areas, and most of them depend directly
or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods.
Providing economic services, such as agricultural extension,
is essential to using agriculture for development. At the
same time, the rural poor need a range of basic services,
such as drinking water, education, and health services. Such
services are difficult to provide in rural areas because
they are subject to the "triple challenge" of
market, state, and community failure. As a result of market
failure, the private sector does not provide these services
to the rural poor to the extent that is desirable from
society's point of view. The state is not very
effective in providing these services either, because these
services have to be provided every day throughout the
country, even in remote areas, and because they require
discretion and cannot easily be standardized, especially if
they are demand driven. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)
and communities themselves are interesting alternative
providers of these services, but they too can fail, because
of capacity constraints and local elite capture. This triple
challenge of market, state, and community failure results in
the poor provision of agricultural and rural services, a
major obstacle to agricultural and rural development.