Navigating gender structure: women's leadership in a Brazilian participatory conservation project

Abstract

Though women's empowerment remains a central topic in feminist scholarship and a growing focus within international development, leadership has not received much attention, particularly in the context of natural resource management. Interventions tend to focus on participation rather than leadership as a means of empowerment. The introduction of a participatory conservation program to the Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve in Amazonas, Brazil1 has had a striking impact on gender relations, increasing not only women's participation in organized groups but also female leadership in social, economic, and political spheres. This paper examines how rural women succeed in overcoming structural obstacles to leadership. Through field observation, focus groups, and semi-structured interviews, I investigate the opportunities for leadership, the environmental, and social factors that condition women's ability to assume leadership roles, and the assistance they do or do not receive in overcoming barriers. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the social structures that shape women's lives vary between leader and non-leader categories and how conservation programing might be altered to increase both women's participation and leadership.

^1. Names of individuals and villages have been changed to protect the identity of research participants. Names of regional urban centers and Mamirauá Sectors are real.

Keywords:

• participatory conservation
• community-based natural resource management
• comanagement
• women's leadership
• sustainable development reserve
• gender
• Brazil

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Carol Colfer for her extremely helpful comments on this article and Esther Mwangi at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the Department of Natural Resources at Cornell University for supporting this work. The author also thanks Max J. Pfeffer, James Lassoie, Parfait Eloundou-Enyegue, and Kathryn March for comments on earlier versions. Financial support for this work was provided by the Center for International Forestry Research, the Fulbright Association, the Rural Sociology Society, and the Einaudi Center and the Development Sociology Department at Cornell University.

Notes

^1. Names of individuals and villages have been changed to protect the identity of research participants. Names of regional urban centers and Mamirauá Sectors are real.

^2. The MSDR is located approximately 600 km west of Manaus at the confluence of the Solimões and Japurá rivers. It is composed of 1,124,000 ha (SCM 1996) and represents the world's last significant example of a unique flooded forest ecosystem, locally known as várzea. The Reserve is comanaged by the Mamirauá Institute (IDSM), the Instituto de Proteção Ambiental do Amazonas, and local residents (see www.mamiraua.org).

^3. Brazilian Federal Law No. 9.985, 18 July 2000.

^4. However, several recent studies address women's leadership specifically (Rights & Resources Initiative 2012).

^5. Due to space limitations, some of these factors are referenced more briefly than others in this article. For a more thorough discussion, see Meola (2012).

^6. Like offering trainings, encouraging women's organization has been one of the ways in which IDSM has assisted women in overcoming barriers to leadership. Women's organization is an important means of promoting women's leadership. IDSM has done a lot of work to support groups that are primarily for women, which results in the creation of leadership positions that are then filled by women. These groups also provide fora for women to discuss common problems; plan cooperative strategies; and learn, practice, and master leadership skills such as public speaking and negotiation.