1. Gender Mainstreaming in Forest
Governance: Lessons from Asia1
Yanti (T) Kusumanto,2 Bhawana Upadhyay,3 and Ratchada Arpornsilp4
Paper presented at Bandung+60 Asian-African Conference
Gender Seminar
Trisakti University, Jakarta, 30 October 2015
1Based on ‘Gender Mainstreaming into Forest Policies in Asia and the Pacific’, a Project
commissioned by FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, Bangkok (2013)
2 TYK research & action consulting
3RECOFTC (The Center for People and Forests)
4RECOFTC

2. What did we do?
1. Looked critically
 How gender mainstreaming in forest governance has been carried out, with
 what achievements, and
 what lessons learned.
2. Identified opportunities to make gender mainstreaming more effective and
suggested ways to overcome challenges.
How did we do it?
 Policy analyses (based on review of policy documents pertaining to forest policies
(laws, regulations, decrees, forest sector plans etc.; and interviews of key
informants)
 Context analysis (based on literature review, interviews of secondary informants,
FGDs, and direct observations during field visits).

3. Gender mainstreaming as defined by UN
and deployed by member states
Gender mainstreaming is a strategy for
making women’s as well as men’s concerns
and experiences an integral dimension of the
design, implementation, monitoring and
evaluation of policies and programmes in all
political, economic and societal spheres so
that women and men benefit equally and
inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate
goal is to achieve gender equality.
ECOSOC 1997

4. © RECOFTC
Examples of gender gaps related
to agriculture and forestry
Worldwide, 80 percent of unpaid
collection of fuel wood is done by women
and girls
In Asia-Pacific, the number of women
engaged in part-time, unpaid wood fuel
and charcoal production is about five times
the number of men. The number of men
employed in full-time, paid wood fuel and
charcoal production is more than ten times
that of women
In every region of the world, women own
on average 19 percent of landholdings,
much less than men
Female professional staff in public
forestry institutions in Asia-Pacific account
for almost 15 percent on average of the
total professional staff.
In the Global South, the livelihoods of
about 1.25 billion people are closely
connected to forests. About half of
them are women and girls.
Despite introduction of gender
mainstreaming as strategy
worldwide, there are pertinent
gender gaps associated with forests
all over the place.

5. 1. Adopting the terminology of gender equality and gender
mainstreaming;
2. Putting a gender mainstreaming policy into place;
3. Implementing gender mainstreaming.
Resulting in the conclusion that overall gender
mainstreaming in forest governance in Nepal is the most
progressive, Thailand the least.
Progress in gender mainstreaming is categorised in
three stages (following Moser 2005):

6. Elaboration of above conclusion
Majority of gender
mainstreaming forestry policies
use an integrationist approach.
Only a minority of the policies
are focused to genuinely
empower women (and more of
such policies are to be found in
Nepal than in the other two
countries).
There has been more
attention to institutional
activities of gender
mainstreaming, rather than
operational activities.
© RECOFTC

7. Suggestions to overcome the challenges
Gender mainstreaming in forest governance should be made more
transformatory —i.e. aiming to transform the existing or dominant development
agenda.
 Such a transformation starts with gender analysis, yet one which develops
understanding of gender relations that intersect with other relations of race,
ethnicity, religion etc., creating knowledge about context-specific locations of
inequality.
Gender mainstreaming in forest
governance should be grounded on
gender analysis into work being done
already, and undertake standalone
work to address particular issues of
strategic importance to women.
©T. Kusumanto

8. Change agents within government are important: gender-sensitivity among
government staff on the ground should be developed by having them adopt a
nuance understanding of the multiple factors which contribute to women’s lack
of choices and marginalisation.
 These points are necessary for shaping an agenda-setting gender main-
streaming (following Jahan 2005), transforming women’s lives and societies.

9. ‘If the village committee convenes
a meeting on community forest,
I will always be there as
I am a primary user of the forest and
know many things about
forests and their resources.
The forest is a source of life
and we want to keep it intact.’
Mrs. Ratchanee
Ban Thung Yao village,
Northern Thailand

10. Terima kasih, Dhanyabad, Kòp Kun!