Because the role of the woman in Nepali society is by and large restricted within the family, her participation in development must also necessarily be within the family.
During recent years whenever development has been discussed, "Women and Development" has been very much on the agenda. It is recognised that because of their invisibility in the decision-making process, women have not gained much from the efforts made so far. The result has often turned out to be the creation of special women-oriented appendices to projects already planned, add-ons that have generally ended up as failures. These add-ons benefit nobody, not even the women directly involved.
The main reason for the failure is that development has been planned to benefit persons in society without any understanding of the fact that, women are not the same sort of citizens as men. A woman is a particular kind of social individual within a particular social formation. Women live different lives from men, through their different roles in society and through the state structures and policies. Development efforts have a different impact on women than on men.
Even though "women and development" is so often misunderstood, it is still very important to inscribe an analysis of gender identities and differences into every single plan or project. Gender is a cultural construction, meaning that the concept of 'woman' and that of 'man' are culturally specific and not naturally given, as opposed to sex, which is a biological construction. Society is built upon cultural constructions of gender, class, ethnicity, religion, etc. The perception that people differ in all social life according to class -and caste relationships is already broadly recognised as important in the planning of development; for example, that it is necessary to plan according to whether the 'target group' is made up of peasants or wage earners. This is because the impact of development as well as the two groups' possible participation in development will differ.