Activities
FAO, through the Forests, Trees and People Programme (FTPP) has developed the Gender analysis and forestry international training package (GAFTP), published in 1995.
GAFTP consists of a series of simple training materials written for forestry policy-makers, managers, field staff and extension workers who may not be familiar with gender or social analysis. Gender analysis is a tool to diagnose the differences between women and men regarding their specific activities, conditions, needs, access to and control over resources and access to development benefits and decision-making; it entails collecting sex-disaggregated data and gender-sensitive information about the population. The FAO package is based on the experiences of foresters and trainers during the Gender Analysis and Forestry in Asia Training Activity in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand, carried out from 1991 to 1992, which consisted of a series of participatory workshops at the regional, national and local levels. The current GAFTP offers a set of modules including both ready-to-use training materials (specific to gender and forestry) and training development materials (general guidelines). This package is providing the necessary knowledge to do a proper gender assessment and contributes to answering questions - Who collects the resources? How? Why? How are they controlled, managed and used? and by whom? - that are critical for sustainable forest management.
GAFTP has been translated into Spanish and adapted for Central America (Análisis de género y desarrollo forestal; Manual de capacitación y aplicación, Guatemala, 1999) and has been widely distributed in the region. A video was prepared in Guatemala (2001) to assist in the use of gender analysis in participatory rural appraisals and to help institutions using GAFTP in facilitation work with communities. An Arabic translation and validation, including specific case studies of the North-African and Near-East region, was finalized during 2001, in collaboration with the Centre of Development Services, Cairo, Egypt. A French adaptation of GAFTP for West and Central Africa was finished in 2002, based on the experiences of six countries in the region: Benin, Mali, Niger, Cameroon, Burkina Faso and Senegal (Analyse selon le genre dans la foresterie communautaire / gestion des resources naturelles, Benin, 2002). A Chinese translation and adaptation of GAFTP is currently being undertaken by the Gender and Development Working Group of the Centre of Women and Development of the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences.