Gender Analysis in Forestry Research: Looking Back and Moving Ahead in International Research

Abstract

"This review charts out the evolution of gender integration in forestry research. Gender has been incorporated in forestry research for the two main purposes of efficiency and equity. Prior to the 1990s forestry research had a strong focus on women’s roles, status and their contributions to forest or forest-related sectors. From the late nineties, however, focus shifted to a greater analysis of gender composition in forest users groups (FUGs) and to gendered impacts of forest resource management. Research evolved from assessing and identifying women’s roles and contributions to a greater elaboration of women’s bargaining power and a conscious effort at engaging their marginalization and exclusion. However the thematic focus of gender research has been uneven and community forestry and related processes of decentralization have been most studied. Asia accounts for the most studies and Latin America the least. Integrating gender into forestry research is constrained by the broad perception that forestry is a male dominated profession and occupation, lack of clarity among researchers of the concept of gender, and a lack of technical skills to work on a social complex term like gender."