Gender and forestry

Gender equality and the economic empowerment of women is an important focus of the Forest and Farm Facility (FFF) Phase II, active in 10 core and 6 network countries. FFF provides direct support to forest and farm producer organizations (FFPOs). Women’s groups and female-led enterprises are strengthened through capacity development to ensure climate-resilient landscapes and improved livelihoods. Concrete achievements include policy engagement, entrepreneurship and business skills, contribution to restoration and mitigation targets, and improved access to social and cultural services. A gender-sensitive monitoring and learning framework ensures mainstreaming of gender equality, youth inclusion and integration of indigenous peoples. The unique FFF approach enables female and male smallholder farmers and their organizations to better advocate their important role as changemakers at local, national and regional levels, including the crucial contributions of rural women to sustainable and inclusive economic development, food sovereignty and climate resilience.

Forestry’s Social Forestry Team supported the development of a framework to assess the extent and effectiveness of CBF globally. Two of the indicators in the global assessment are equity (e.g. equitable sharing of costs and benefits) and inclusiveness (e.g. engaging marginalized individuals and groups, including women and youth, and sharing equitably in decision-making processes and benefits).The assessment framework was developed in 2015, tested in 20 countries and finalized in 2019. Assessment findings are being used to facilitate strengthening of CBF in selected countries.  

The Forest tenure assessment framework aims to operationalize the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGT) in the forestry sector by assessing participatory forest tenure regimes against the VGGT principles. The framework helps countries evaluate their forest tenure related policies, laws, institutions, and administration to identify strengths and gaps with respect to the good governance principles of the VGGT, identify actions for strengthening governance of tenure, and to prioritize areas for improvements in tenure. The VGGT has two implementing principles that contribute to gender equality: human dignity (non-discrimination) and justice (gender equity). The VGGT specifically calls for gender sensitive policies and laws as well as gender sensitive processes and procedures in the recognition, protection, and transfer of rights.

The UN-REDD Programme is dedicated to integrating gender equality and women’s empowerment into the support it provides to partner countries. This approach ensures that all stakeholders—women, men, and youth—can equitably and meaningfully participate in, contribute to, and benefit from REDD+ processes and actions. As outlined in its Methodological Brief on Gender, the programme’s gender approach promotes the systematic inclusion of gender equality and women’s empowerment principles as both independent and cross-cutting interventions throughout the REDD+ policy cycle and within its technical support at local, national, regional, and global levels.

A key practice of the programme is its bottom-up approach, which actively involves local and indigenous women, men, and youth in its support initiatives. This approach ensures that REDD+ efforts reflect the needs and improve the livelihoods of all stakeholders, particularly the most marginalized, such as women and youth.

To evaluate the impact of its support on achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment, the programme uses a Gender Marker Rating System. This system comprehensively monitors the gender responsiveness of its support and helps identify lessons learned and best practices for replication.

Gender equality, diversity and inclusion play a central role in the implementation of the Sustainable Wildlife Management (SWM) Programme, a European Union funded initiative of the Organization of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS).

The SWM Programme prioritizes people's rights in wildlife management, aiming to balance conservation needs with wildlife use for food security and cultural practices. To this end the programme has developed a series of innovative social safeguards tools to ensure the implementation of a Community Rights-Based Approach (CRBA). The promotion of gender equality and women’s empowerment is built into the CRBA. Gender equality, diversity and inclusion are mainstreamed through participatory and gender-responsive strategies and plans (and budgets), as well as collection of sex-disaggregated data, use of gender-sensitive indicators, and documentation and dissemination of good practices.

The SWM Programme mobilizes an international group of partner organizations, which includes the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

The Nurturing Community of Knowledge Practice for Women in Dryland Forests and Agrosilvopastoral Systems (WeCaN) is a platform dedicated to empowering women in dryland regions. It facilitates connections among women, enabling them to share best practices, engage in knowledge-sharing events, and participate in training sessions designed to enhance their advocacy and gender mainstreaming skills.

By integrating existing national and regional networks, WeCaN allows more than 250 members to exchange knowledge, lessons learned, and experiences across 31 countries. The community includes representatives from grassroots organizations, civil society, policymakers, researchers, and other stakeholders committed to promoting gender-responsive approaches in dryland areas.

WeCaN aims to highlight and utilize women's unique solutions to challenges in these regions, strengthen their capacities through targeted training sessions and webinars, and expedite policy processes by creating actionable proposals to address advocacy challenges. In addition, WeCaN is supporting the gender mainstreaming component together with IUCN of the Sustainable Forest Management Impact Program on Dryland Sustainable Landscapes.  

While the health aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic did not affected rural areas as much as urban centres, containment measures posed new challenges to rural women with regards to their roles in household food security, as agricultural producers, farm managers, processors, traders, wage workers and entrepreneurs. Past experience shows that rural women are disproportionally affected by health and economic crises in a number of ways, including but not limited to food security and nutrition, poverty, access to health facilities, services and economic opportunities, and gender-based violence (GBV).

This brief compiles evidence from current and previous epidemics to explore the socio-economic implications of the impact of the pandemic on food systems and rural economies, and how a gender-sensitive approach can help address key policy issues related to the functioning of food and agricultural systems and the special circumstances of rural women. It also provides concrete policy recommendations to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic on rural women and girls.