Gender and Sustainable Forest Management in East Africa and Latin America

This paper presents a comparative study of forest management across four countries in East Africa and Latin America: Kenya, Uganda, Bolivia, and Mexico. It focuses on one question: Do varying proportions of women (low, mixed, high) in forest user groups influence their likelihood of adopting forest...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEcology and society Vol. 16; no. 1; p. 17
Main Authors Mwangi, Esther, Meinzen-Dick, Ruth, Sun, Yan
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Resilience Alliance 01.03.2011
Subjects
Community forestry
Forest ecology
Forest management
Forest regeneration
Forest resources
Forest restoration
Forestry policy
Forestry research
gender
sustainability
Sustainable forest management
User groups
Uganda
ASW, Mexico
Kenya
Bolivia
Africa
Latin America
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Summary:This paper presents a comparative study of forest management across four countries in East Africa and Latin America: Kenya, Uganda, Bolivia, and Mexico. It focuses on one question: Do varying proportions of women (low, mixed, high) in forest user groups influence their likelihood of adopting forest resource enhancing behavior? We found that higher proportions of females in user groups, and especially user groups dominated by females, perform less well than mixed groups or male dominated ones. We suggest that these differences may be related to three factors: gender biases in technology access and dissemination, a labor constraint faced by women, and a possible limitation to women’s sanctioning authority. Mixed female and male groups offer an avenue for exploiting the strengths of women and men, while tempering their individual shortcomings.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
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ISSN:1708-3087
1708-3087
DOI:10.5751/ES-03873-160117