The growing risk of vulnerability to climate change is widely discussed in the scientific and political sphere. More evidence from local case studies emerges that document this risk. Vulnerability to climate change and variability appears most likely to negatively affect poor people, particularly women. Tendencies to widen existing inequalities have been observed. In the Lake Faguibine area in Northern Mali the social, political and ecological conditions have drastically changed in the last three decades. We conducted 6 single gender participatory workshops using PRA in two communities. The workshops assessed vulnerability and adaptive strategies to climate variability and change for livestock and forest based livelihoods. Our results show divergences in the adaptive strategies of men and women. Migration represented one of the most important strategies for men. Women perceived this strategy more as a cause of vulnerability than an adaptive strategy. Traditionally male activities have been added to the workload of women (e.g. small ruminant herding). The historical axes show that development projects targeting women have not integrated climate change and variability into their planning. Most activities have been built around small scale agriculture. With the drying out of Lake Faguibine, those water dependent activities are no longer relevant. Women have developed their own adaptive strategies based on newly emerged forest resources in the former lake area (e.g. charcoal production). However, women are hindered from realizing the potential of these new activities. This is due to loss of person power in the household, unclear access to natural resources, lack of knowledge and financial resources. Lack of power to influence decision at the household and community levels as well as limited market opportunities for women are additional factors. Even though women's vulnerability is increasing in the short term, over the long term the emerging changes in women's roles could lead to positive impacts. These impacts could be both societal (division of labor and power, new social spaces), and economic (market access, livestock wealth). Locally specific gender sensitive analysis of vulnerability is needed to understand dynamics and interaction of divergent adaptive strategies. Societal and political change at broader scales is needed to realize potential benefits for women in the long term.

The value chains of three internationally important dry forest NTFPs, namely gum arabic, gum olibanum (frankincense) and honey from Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Zambia respectively, were assessed in terms of the roles played by women and the benefits they obtain from their involvement. Women perform a variety of functions at different stages in the value chains, but their roles tend to be poorly visible and inadequately acknowledged, largely because they are either operating in the informal sector, are part-time employees, or carry out their activities at home between family responsibilities. Where women's roles are more prominent, this is primarily due to gender orientated interventions by external agencies. Several constraints to fostering women's empowerment were identified, with some easier to overcome than others. Particularly difficult to address are gender based, social-cultural barriers. Suggestions for enhancing women's benefits include: greater recognition of informal markets, the opportunities and constraints associated with them, and their position relative to export markets; improved support for collective action where this can provide women with greater voice, negotiating power, and help with economies of scale; more targeted training that addresses areas identified by women as useful and important to them; time-saving technologies and support systems such as child care; and creating greater gender awareness amongst stakeholders.

Indonesian furniture accounts for almost 1% of the global furniture trade, valued at more than USD 135 billion. In many countries, including Japan, European countries and Indonesia, women make decisions about selecting which furniture to buy. In Central Java's Jepara District — the centre of teak furniture production in Indonesia — annual furniture exports are valued at USD 120 million. However, the roles of small-scale producers and women workers in furniture industry are weak. Though women workers play an important role in generating revenue, they are paid less than men. They are also less powerful and exercise less control over resources, decision making, product development and bargaining. Action research and value chain analysis were used to improve small-scale producers and women workers. This paper explores different scenarios for upgrading small-scale producers, such as participation in trade exhibitions, training programmes and producer associations and their effects on women workers.

The Congo Basin region of Central Africa contains the second largest contiguous tropical rainforest in the world, which is an important source of livelihood for millions of people. It is also important for climate change adaptation, as well as mitigation policies on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD ). Men and women relate to and use the forest differently and so may experience the effects of climate change and REDD policies differently. Investigations through semi-structured interviews and document reviews in three countries of the region revealed that women have had limited participation in discussions on issues of climate change or REDD . There is some evidence that gender consideration will become part of future national REDD strategies. Strategies to foster the effective participation of all stakeholders are essential to ensure that gender dimensions are addressed in issues of climate change, forest access, forest management and distribution of carbon benefits.

This paper highlights the ways that gender analysis has been ignored in the development of forestry and land policy in Senegal. The development of local governance/ rural councils through history and their increased decision-making power that occurred with the 1996 decentralization/ regionalization did not take into account the ways that women's representation (or lack of) on these councils would affect women's ability to access needed resources. This gender policy analysis paper is guided by two main questions: do the main decentralization reforms, which aim for the principles of equity, accountability, ownership and local participation, promote gender equity and tenure rights in access to land and forest resources? How are the forest and land laws and policies gendered and right-based? I argue that, the lack of adequate gender analysis, consideration of local communities' rights, and of accountability mechanisms in forest and land policy reforms is due to the low participation and representation of women in political institutions such as political parties, in legislature, and in local governments and to the fact that the forest sector is not gender sensitive. These traditionally male dominated national and local government institutions are the main causes of inequity and exclusion of marginalized groups mainly women in land and forest governance both at the policy and practical level. As long as forest and land policies remain ungendered and do not have a rights-based approach, women will always be legally and socially marginalized from decision making and benefits from forest and land resources. Before advocating for gender equity and women's rights and tenure in practice, it is necessary and a pre-requisite to have clearly defined gendered national forest and land laws and policies, effective participation and representation of women in political institutions, and gendered accountability mechanisms to hold political leaders, government and local government officials accountable if they fail in practice to recognize women's ownership rights to land and forest resources.

Gender equality has been studied in community based forest certification projects in two forest user groups in Nepal. contributing to an understanding of gender equality with a focus on participation of women in a forest certification project and on awareness levels of forest users. Experts from the project and local people were interviewed. Committee meetings were conducted and household interviews were also carried out. The results include information on the background and lives of respondents as well as the effects of forest certification on their lives today; on age, caste and occupation; attitudes of men and women regarding forestry and their opinions on conditions before and after forest certification; non-timber forest products (NTFP), Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification processes in Nepalese forests; forest committee meetings. This paper summarizes selected findings from George (2010); results and suggestions may serve to improve plights of forest users in Nepal.

This article explores the effects that gender composition of forest user groups has on property rights and forestry governance, based on data from 290 forest user groups in Kenya, Uganda, Bolivia, and Mexico. Findings indicate gender composition of user groups is important, but not always in the expected ways. Female-dominated groups tend to have more property rights to trees and bushes, and collect more fuelwood but less timber than do male-dominated or gender-balanced groups. Gender-balanced groups participate more in forestry decision-making and are more likely to have exclusive use of forests. Female-dominated groups participate less, sanction less and exclude less. Although policy makers and practitioners are advised to seek interventions that strengthen women's groups by delivering information, technologies and capacity-building programs in formats that take into account women's constraints, it is also important to gain better understanding of the dynamics of mixed-gender groups, including the nature and types of cooperation among males and females.

The current trend in forest tenure reform promotes identity-based categories, such as indigenous people, on the assumption that this provides better access to forest resources for marginalized groups. India's historic Forest Rights Act of 2006 recognizes the traditional rights of the scheduled tribes and other forest-dependent people dwelling in and around forestlands. This paper examines the politics of individual and collective access to forestland and the political representation of Bhil tribal women in the semi-arid Banswara district, Rajasthan, India. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with 54 informants, and two focus group discussions. A rights-based access approach was used to analyse outcomes of forest tenure reform on tribal women's access to forestland, and inclusion in, and/or exclusion from, collective decision making about forestland management. The findings indicate that the new identity-based forest tenure reform is mere tokenism and hinders rather than promotes tribal women's political empowerment and access to forest-based resources.

This paper discusses the evolution of the roles of Brazilian women within one of the most prominent organizations of the Amazonian social movement, the National Council of Extractivist Populations (CNS). Between 1990 and 2009, Brazil's Federal government created 89 extractive and sustainable development reserves in Amazonia, encompassing 24 million hectares. The conceptual underpinning of these reserves - sustainable and multiple-use forest management — are daily put into practice by thousands of rural Amazonian women. However, rural women's relative role in forest policy is currently marginal. The Secretariat of Women Extractivists of CNS helped to transform women's roles within CNS and the political hierarchy of extractive reserves from largely invisible to one of significance. Their work across sectors, cultivation of ties with the State, capacity building and acknowledgement of women's cultural connections to forests, provide a strong foundation for an increasing role of Amazonian women to promote sustainable forest management and conservation.

This review charts out recent developments in gender research in forestry research, with a focus on tropical and dry forests in developing countries. We reviewed 121 publications extracted from the Web of Knowledge database and publications by the Center for International Forestry Research for the past 10 years. Over the past decade (2000–2011) gender-focused forestry research has been dominated by studies that evaluate men's and women's participation in community forestry initiatives and the commercialisation of forest products and market access. Community forestry studies were mainly conducted in South Asia and market access studies in Africa. The geographical spread of studies is uneven, with most studies in India and Nepal. We suggest that the observed patterns relate to recent devolution reforms of forest management, which have a longer tradition in South Asia. The patterns also relate to the focus on poverty reduction efforts that gained widespread prominence in the 1990s. Integrating gender into forestry research is constrained by the broad perception that forestry is a male-dominated profession, a lack of clarity among researchers of the concept of gender, and a lack of technical skills, interest and/or awareness of gender. Key knowledge gaps are identified.