Gender relations at the forest-farm interface in West Africa: prospects for transformative processes in agroforestry

Abstract

The gender dimension of tree-resources dependency has been well documented in the West African agroforestry parklands where women are the main beneficiaries of non-timber forest products, which are critically important for food security and cash income. Diminishing tree resources, land degradation and climate change have increased women’s vulnerability, while restrictive socio-cultural norms offer limited opportunities for women to participate in landscape restoration or agroforestry initiatives, and to benefit from these. There is a need to develop transformative processes that can redress gender inequalities in access to and control of resources, and to actively engage communities in these processes of change. To understand ways that this can be done, we first developed an innovative approach that brought together elements of the Gender Action Learning Systems (Mayoux, 2014) and the Forestry Poverty Toolkit (Shepherd, 2008) with system thinking. We applied this set of participatory tools in three communities in northern Ghana and four communities in southern Burkina Faso; interviews were conducted with male family heads and one adult female in each of 84 households. Analysis shows the contribution of income from trees, particularly shea (Vitellaria paradoxa), to total household cash income was very significant in both countries, especially in poor households. This income was almost exclusively sourced by women, who often have neither control over how it is spent nor a voice in decision-making for land restoration (e.g. tree planting and/or management, as well as soil and water conservation improvements). Furthermore, activities typically done by women, both in respect to farming and tree-product harvesting and to their reproductive role, are significantly less valued than are men’s. We presented these findings to the communities through structured community dialogues around gender relations. These included culturally sensitive workshops that brought together an engaged men and women from different ages and generations. Participants were encouraged and motivated to reflect on how local gender norms generate constraints and limit their opportunities to increase resilience in landscapes and livelihoods. We show that this integrated and innovative approach has substantial potential to tackle gender norms, one of the major bottlenecks to scaling up restoration interventions