This document summarizes a study that analyzed global data on gender and forest product use to determine if commonly held views are supported. The study found: 1) Claims that forest product harvesting is mainly done by women only held true in Sub-Saharan Africa, not other regions. 2) Both men and women predominantly collect forest products for subsistence, but men's share of products collected for sale is higher. 3) The vast majority of forest product collection for both men and women is from state-owned lands, not common lands as often claimed. The study concludes there is large regional variation in forest product collection by gender and many claims from case studies do not hold globally. Men play a

1. 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 Meeting
3rd October 2012
THINKING beyond the canopy

2. Introduction
 Many of the claims often
made in the literature on
gender and forest products
are based on case studies
 However, it is unclear how
generalizable they actually
are
 We investigated whether
several commonly held views
on gender and forest use are
supported by the global PEN
data using descriptive and
regression analysis
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3. Is the harvesting of forest products mainly
undertaken by women?
Share of income from unprocessed forest products by region and gender
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4. Is the harvesting of forest products
mainly undertaken by women?
 Our data do not support
this claim
 For unprocessed
products, this claim only
holds in Sub-Saharan
Africa
 For processed products, it
does not hold in any
geographical location
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5. Do women collect primarily for
subsistence and men for sale?
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6. Do women collect for primarily for
subsistence and men for sale?
• Both women and men
collect predominantly for
subsistence use, but …
• Men´s sale share is
higher than women´s
• However, in Sub-
Saharan Africa, the
share is almost equal
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7. Do women collect a greater share of forest
products from lands under common property
tenure regimes than men?
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8. Do women collect a greater share of forest
products from lands under common
property tenure regimes than men?
 The vast majority of products for
both genders is collected under
state property tenure regimes
 In the global sample, the
proportion collected by men and
women from common property is
about the same
 The conventional claim holds for
Latin America and Asia, but not for
Africa
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9. Summary of PEN gender findings
 There is large regional variation in both the shares of
forest products collected by women
 Even after controlling for most of the factors discussed in
the literature as well as differences in level of market
integration, women in Africa collect a much larger share
of forest products than women in Asia and Latin America
 Many of the claims that originate from the gender and
forest literature do not hold using the PEN global data
sample
 Men play a much more important and diverse role in the
contribution of forest products to rural livelihoods than is
often reported
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10. Conclusions/Reflections
 Deeper understanding of gendered patterns of income
generation are important for designing policies aimed at
improving household welfare in general, but especially
those 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 reference
points
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11. Look out for…
 Special Issue of World
Development including all of the
PEN-related research findings
 PEN
website:http://www.cifor.org/pen/
THINKING beyond the canopy

12. http://www.cifor.org
THINKING beyond the canopy