Women and timber management: From assigned cook to strategic decision-maker of community land use

Numerous studies on community forest and land use show clear benefits of including women in natural resource management. Women’s empowerment in collaborative timber management, however, is understudied and rarely achieved on the ground. We focused on women’s participation in seven community-based timber projects within three Brazilian Amazonian extractive reserves, asking: 1. What resources (actual allocations, future claims and expectations) have shaped women’s roles in collaborative timber management? 2. How do community women perceive their role in collaborative timber management? 3. Have community members and partner organizations perceived gender equity in collaborative timber management? Over 15 months, we carried out in-depth interviews with 52 respondents, conducted participant observation, and led focus group discussions that included community concept drawing activities. We uncovered that while these collaborative timber management projects still centered on male workers, in two of the three extractive reserves, empowerment processes ultimately opened spaces for greater engagement by women overall in strategic administrative and logging coordinator positions. We added to the scholarly conceptualizations of women’s empowerment, demonstrating that ‘power through’ can lead to more permanent empowerment levels. Although normative values associated with gender (i.e. men stronger than women) were subtly embedded in the actual allocation of both human and social resources (capacity building and networks, respectively) for collaborative timber management, integration of a few women in male-centered training efforts provided venues for transformative agency towards women’s placement in strategic timber management positions. Supporting such transformative processes to empower women in community land use and forestry requires awareness of gender-based discriminatory attitudes and practices on the part of men and women, as well as innovations by policymakers, community members, government, and non-governmental organizations.