Send message to Authors

Paper short abstract

Using feminist political ecology as theoretical base, this paper explores literature from diverse contexts in community forest governance to understand women’s navigation of power dynamics through collective organizing, knowledge negotiation, embodied practice, subtle acts that reshapes governance.

Paper long abstract

Majority of development discourses related to women in community based forest management describes them either lacking agency with victims of patriarchal structures, requiring their rescue and intervention or with an essentialist view, romanticizing them as natural environmental stewards innate with care and nurture abilities. This side often leaves the strategic, sophisticated ways women take to navigate the power relations within forest governance structures for individual or collective causes; when their voices are unheard, their aims not understood and needs are misrepresented. This paper employs feminist political ecology as a theoretical base and to do analysis of secondary literature by capturing the patterns of navigation women deploy despite diverse local circumstances. The research draws case studies from South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America which showcases women amplify their voices when individual credibility is questioned. They form alliances which transcend social boundaries. They use their physical presence, labor and visibility to make claims in other alternative informal spaces, when formal organization of participation become exclusionary. They propose alternative approaches to forest management that emphasize household needs, sustainable ecological usage. They adapt and negotiate in the overly bureaucratized gendered environment, rejecting both dismissive and idealized portrayals, asserting as complex political identities, posing them structural challenges and opportunities too. This research contends that effective forest governance should support and appreciate existing strategic practice rooted in indigenous epistemologies, rather than imposing external empowerment framework without any adaptation to local contexts.