Women in community forestry organizations: An empirical study in Thailand

Abstract

This paper seeks to communicate recent findings on gender mainstreaming in forest management in three villages around the Koke Chantanang community forest in the Sa Kaeo province of Thailand. The research employed six in-depth interviews and 124 household surveys to assess how the community forest is utilized and identify how gender is mainstreamed in forest management. The results shows that community forest utilization offers opportunities for forest sustainability. However, findings on gender involvement reveal that the women are continuously dominated, with only three women out of 20 representatives on the village forest committee and making decisions (women make up only 16% of the village forest committees). Women are also not well represented in forest conservation initiatives despite the fact that they are the source of food security for their households. This paper argues that the lack of knowledge exchange and women's continued exclusion from forest management are critical issues that could undermine the future of the world's forests. This research recommends a more participatory approach that will provide for women's equal participation in decision making and their full contribution in forest resource conservation.

Keywords:

• Forest
• gender
• management
• sustainability
• Thailand

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Dr Sura Pattanakiat for supervising this work, which is part of my thesis. I wish to also thank the Faculty of Environment, Mahidol University, for providing partial support to the research. Sincere appreciation to Professor Gun Lidestav and Dr Maureen Reed for reviewing this paper. Dr and Madam Tabifor are highly appreciated for their continued support during this research. Special thanks to the staff of the Royal Forest Department for providing useful information and guidance throughout this research.