Gender Inequality in Malidino Biodiversity Community-based Reserve, Senegal: Political Parties and the Village Approach

Abstract

"This article illustrates how the use of village committees to manage natural resources in the Malidino Biodiversity Community-based Reserve was inconsistent with democratic decentralisation objectives. Ostensibly participatory projects that create village committees bestow discretionary power on traditional leaders who are not popularly accountable and have a poor track record of serving womens needs. This article interrogates how participatory approaches used in the Malidino reserve shaped the gender distribution of outcomes in decision processes, access to forest resources and land, incomes and economic activities, biodiversity conservation, and rural community empowerment and social change. It also shows how donor sponsored participatory approaches might exacerbate party politics, and through them, ethnic, kinship and gender cleavages by bestowing power and authority on actors belonging to a rival party and on actors with questionable democratic legitimacy. Both, the participatory parallel institutions and local governments, serve to undermine womens ability to collectively address their own interests."