Participation by Marginalisation: Women in Community-based Forest Management in Kilwa District, Tanzania

Abstract

This paper highlights ways in which marginalisation of women in forest management participation is happening within community-based forest certification programmes. Drawing from interviews, focus group discussions and observation with men and women in Kilwa District, the paper examines how women are excluded from participating in forest-related activities and in leadership positions. It reveals discourses which institutionalise marginalisation and shows how these discourses have re-produced culture, distance and time as the main constraints to women’s participation in forest management. The paper’s main contribution is to show how the factors which lead to women’s exclusion are woven and become normalized in everyday discourses and continue to exclude women. We show how the institutionalisation of women exclusion from forest marginalisation happens even in the very programmes which claim to bring equal participation of men and women.

Keywords: forest certification; community-based forest management; gender; women; participation; social justice