Women’s participation in forest management: A cross-country analysis Eric A. Coleman a, *, Esther Mwangi b a Department of Political Science, Florida State University, 543 Bellamy, Tallahassee, FL 32306-2230, USA b Property Rights and Tenure, Forests and Governance Program, Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Jalan CIFOR, Situ Gede, Bogar Barat 16115, Indonesia 1. Introduction In recent years there has been much academic and policy interest on the role of women’s participation in forest management (Agarwal, 2001, 2009, 2010; Agrawal and Chhatre, 2006; Cornwall, 2003; Dolisca et al., 2009; Molinas, 1998). Participation has long been viewed by development scholars and practitioners as a crucial element that allows poor and marginalized groups to exert influence over institutions and decisions that critically affect their lives (Mayoux, 1995). Particularly in the forestry sector, participa- tion has been viewed as a pathway towards improving governance, promoting sustainable use and management, all while enhancing livelihoods benefits and opportunities. Whether women’s partici- pation in forest management facilitates sustainable use or improves livelihoods is still the subject of intense debate. The factors that determine women’s participation are critically important because forestry reforms in many developing countries explicitly aim at improving the participation of marginalized groups in decision making processes such as forest management (Mai et al., 2011). Furthermore, the topic is of critical importance to effective implementation of sustainable forest management and climate change mitigation initiatives, in particular, those that relate to forest management such as REDD+. The existing research investigating women’s participation examines why and to what extent women participate in forest management (Agarwal, 2001, 2010; Cornwall, 2003). Using this theory as a background, models of different types of participation have been used to explain variation in forest conditions (Agarwal, 2010; Agrawal and Chhatre, 2006) or variation in the degree of cooperativeness of the members in forest institutions defined as their willingness to engage in forest-management activities (Dolisca et al., 2009; Molinas, 1998). Attending meetings, frequency of meetings, speaking up at meetings, or holding official positions in forest committees are some indicators of participation in forestry settings which in turn reflect a higher level of involvement and engagement by participants (Agarwal, 2001). These indicators capture a range of individual and group rights and responsibilities. For example, user group meetings may determine who can harvest which forest products and when. They can also determine fines and penalties for any infractions. Following the theoretical work by Agarwal (2001) six categories of variables are hypothesized to affect women’s participation in forest institutions: 1-rules that exclude entry of women into the participatory process; 2-social norms such as segregation, division of labor or gendered biases; 3-social preferences that give more weight to men’s participation than women’s; 4-entrenched claims by men who are hesitant to give power to women; 5-few personal endowments of property or social networks that would allow Global Environmental Change 23 (2013) 193–205 ARTICLE INFO Article history: Received 18 November 2011 Received in revised form 14 July 2012 Accepted 5 October 2012 Available online 28 November 2012 Keywords: Gender Participation Forestry Bolivia Kenya Mexico Uganda ABSTRACT The role of women’s participation in community forestry has recently been investigated in a number of theoretical and empirical papers. This paper takes an existing theoretical framework developed by Agarwal (2001) and applies it to examine two questions: (1) What determines women’s participation in forestry institutions? and (2) What effect does women’s participation have on institutional outcomes (such as levels of conflict and rule fairness)? To answer these questions data is used from two sources: (1) a detailed household survey conducted with 1.433 households in Bolivia, Kenya, Mexico, and Uganda and (2) a more aggregated dataset from forest associations investigated by the International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) program in 10 countries. The analyses suggest that women’s participation is likely when institutions exist that are less exclusionary, when households have more education, and when there is small economic inequality in general and across genders in particular. A history of women’s participation, especially when women are seated on forest councils or attain leadership positions, is highly correlated with less disruptive conflict. ß 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: ecoleman@fsu.edu (E.A. Coleman), e.mwangi@cgiar.org (E. Mwangi). Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Global Environmental Change journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/gloenvcha 0959-3780/$ – see front matter ß 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2012.10.005