myths and realities about men, women and forest use
DESCRIPTION
There are several commonly held views on how men and women use forests – these views are often based on case studies. But examining global data gathered during the Poverty Environment Network project has come up with some different interpretations, as shown in this presentation. This presentation was given during CIFOR’s Annual Meeting 2012, which was held on 1–5 October at the headquarters in Bogor, Indonesia.TRANSCRIPT
THINKING beyond the canopy
Myths and realities about men,women and forest use:
A global comparative study
Terry Sunderland, Ramadhani Achdiawan, Arild Angelsen, Ronnie Babigumira,Amy Ickowitz, Fiona Paumgarten, Victoria Reyes-García, Gerald Shively
CIFOR Annual General Meeting3rd October 2012
THINKING beyond the canopy
Introduction Many of the claims often
made in the literature ongender and forest productsare based on case studies
However, it is unclear howgeneralizable they actuallyare
We investigated whetherseveral commonly held viewson gender and forest use aresupported by the global PENdata using descriptive andregression analysis
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Is the harvesting of forest products mainlyundertaken by women?
Share of income from unprocessed forest products by region and gender
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Is the harvesting of forest productsmainly undertaken by women?
Our data do not supportthis claim
For unprocessedproducts, this claim onlyholds in Sub-SaharanAfrica
For processed products, itdoes not hold in anygeographical location
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Do women collect primarily forsubsistence and men for sale?
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Do women collect for primarily forsubsistence and men for sale?
• Both women and mencollect predominantly forsubsistence use, but …
• Men´s sale share ishigher than women´s
• However, in Sub-Saharan Africa, theshare is almost equal
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Do women collect a greater share of forestproducts from lands under common property
tenure regimes than men?
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Do women collect a greater share of forestproducts from lands under commonproperty tenure regimes than men?
The vast majority of products forboth genders is collected understate property tenure regimes
In the global sample, theproportion collected by men andwomen from common property isabout the same
The conventional claim holds forLatin America and Asia, but not forAfrica
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Summary of PEN gender findings
There is large regional variation in both the shares offorest products collected by women
Even after controlling for most of the factors discussed inthe literature as well as differences in level of marketintegration, women in Africa collect a much larger shareof forest products than women in Asia and Latin America
Many of the claims that originate from the gender andforest literature do not hold using the PEN global datasample
Men play a much more important and diverse role in thecontribution of forest products to rural livelihoods than isoften reported
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Conclusions/Reflections
Deeper understanding of gendered patterns of incomegeneration are important for designing policies aimed atimproving household welfare in general, but especiallythose aimed at improving the livelihoods of women
Culture is important! Interesting methodological issue: what we can learn from
case studies vs. global data This kind of study helps us to see overall patterns, but.. To understand the stories behind the patterns, case
studies can be useful, but not as stand-alone referencepoints
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Look out for…
Special Issue of WorldDevelopment including all of thePEN-related research findings
PENwebsite:http://www.cifor.org/pen/
THINKING beyond the canopy
http://www.cifor.org