that only women are slated to work with women and only men are slated to work with men. The paucity of women in agricultural service assures that rural women will remain uncontacted and unassisted in terms of mainstream agricultural training and services. Although it is probably true that many people prefer to learn or to work with people of their same sex, coeducational programs have worked in a large portion of the world. Berger et al. remark that "since very little empirical work has been done in this area, there is really no basis on which to judge the relative effectiveness of men and women agents in assisting women farmers" (1984:54).
The Integrated Cereals Project in Nepal funded by USAID studied women's contribution to agriculture in four areas of the country and queried how women farmers could most effectively be reached (Shrestha et al., 1984). In this case because of women's important role in the agricultural system, it was "posited that unless new information, methods, and techniques are made available to women, major potential change agents in the agricultural labor force are being by-passed" (Shrestha et al., 1984:6). When questioned, the women farmers said they did most of the agricultural work (79%) and more than a third (35%) of the decision-making (Table 4). The female extensionists agreed with the female farmers but the male extensionists thought women did only some of the work and were not involved in decision-making. The male workers were therefore "unlikely to perceive female farmers as important recipients of extension information" (Shrestha et al., 1984:29) and this undoubtedly constrained their contacts with women. Concomitantly, female farmers did not think of themselves as recipients of extension information. However, there were contacts by male extension agents to family members as reported by female farmers. The data showed that three fourths of the male extensionists did talk with women but only sporadically (about only 16% of their contacts are women); and one fourth never contacted women (Table 5). Female farmers were asked if they would visit male and female extensionists. Table 6 shows that almost all the women farmers said they would seek out a female extensionist and would go to their homes for advice, a common practice of male farmers towards male extensionists. Fewer would ask a male extensionist or visit their houses. Yet, in the areas where fewer women would. contact the male extensionists, male extensionists had visted the women. This case illustrates that people prefer to work with people of the same gender, but in practice farmers work with those who have the knowledge, power, and access to resources. It should also be mentioned that only 2.5% of all extension workers in Nepal are female, so the possibility of having a woman agent nearby is remote.
Because of the polarization of the extension service in many places, there is little or no way to account for the variety of real situations and to take into account the needs of the various household members. Some households may share resources well and have a division of labor that is complementary. There are households where husbands may preempt resources that other household members helped to generate. In some households both husband and wife are full time farmers; in others the husband may be absent and may or may not send remittances while the wife does the farming; in still others a woman will have no male labor or support; in some households only the husband will farm or the wife is a part-time assistant. These varieties of intrahousehold dynamics and access to services and resources by different family members have to be considered in the design of technology testing and dissemination.
Part of the reason that it is difficult to reach the women in the practice of