Role of Gender in Community Forest Management: The Case of Humbo District Community Based Forest Management Project, Wolaita Zone, Snnpr, Ethioipia

Abstract

Over the last few decades Community-based forest management has become increasingly popular in many developing countries including Ethiopia in response to the continued depletion of forest resources due to the non-participatory and inequitable property right arrangements in the traditional forest management systems. However, empirical evidences on aspects of gender roles specially, women's participation in the new approach is scarce. The current study was conducted at Humbo community forest management project in Wolita zone of Southern Ethiopia with the aim to investigate the role and implications of gender for sustainable forest management in context of CFM. Accordingly, three out of seven CFM co- operatives were purposively selected for the study. This was followed by a stratified random sampling of 150 households (113 male and 37 female) based on gender. Important research data were collected through household survey, key informant interviews and focus group discussions. The data analysis was carried out by using descriptive statistics and econometric analysis. Results of the study showed that the participation of female headed household particularly in higher level decision making and forest protection activities was very low compared to the males. In contrast, results on division of labor among household members revealed that females were the primary collectors of NTFPs mainly for household consumption. Analysis of major demographic and socio economic variables influencing participation in CFM activities showed that gender (being male), wealth (richer), age (older) and education (literate) user group members have higher access to participate at decision making level. The study revealed that gender differences along with other socio economic disparities do affect the participation of households in forest management activities and decision making. While the heavily forest dependent poorer and female headed households are merely involved in labor and time consuming forestry activities such as planting and NTFPs collection, the richer and male-headed households have taken most of the decision making posts. The study suggests that improving the participation and role of female headed households in higher level forest management activities of the project should be given consideration.

Keywords: Community Forestry, Forest based product, Division of Labor, Gender