Gender issues in mountains
Women and men play key roles with respect to environmental protection and social and economic development in mountain areas. Women are often the primary managers of mountain resources, guardians of biodiversity and the main actors in terms of agriculture, animal husbandry and other small scale economic activities. In mountain communities, women are keepers of traditional knowledge, custodians of local culture and experts in traditional medicine.
However, women mountain dwellers are often invisible and their voices go unheard. They rarely participate in decisions affecting the management and use of local resources; they often lack basic rights, have little access to ownership and land tenure rights, education, health services and training. Since women and girls have less access to household resources, they are at a greater risk of hunger and malnutrition.
As men migrate to lowlands areas or abroad in search of better income, women are left to manage the farm and household and participate in small trade and income-earning activities. Yet lack of access to credit hampers efforts to improve or expand their farm activities and earn cash incomes.Inaccessibility shapes the lives of mountain communities. Further, the challenges men and women face in mountain regions is intensified by altitude, steep terrain and isolation.
Call for papers on women’s lives in mountainsnewsScholarly papers related to women’s lives in mountainous areas may be submitted for the Fourth International Women of the Mountains Conference until 30 June 2015. The conference, organized by Utah Valley University (UVU), the Kyrgyz National Center for the Development of Mountain Regions under the...
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Transnational Working Table 1eventThe first of two workshops on the results of projects in mountainous European countries and on the development of the Alps will allow participants to share knowledge and experiences on Alpine Space Projects. The meeting will also discuss WikiAlps, an encyclopaedia-like online platform, and its potential use in policy design...
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Multimedia on policy recommendations for SMD in the AndesnewsDuring the Regional Workshop Post-Rio +20 "Sustainable Mountain Development: Building the future we need" held on November 12-14 in Lima, Peru, the Consortium for Sustainable Development of the Andean Ecoregion (CONDESAN) launched a multimedia which containing key information and policy recommendations for sustainable mountain development in the Andes. The...
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Bhutan+10: Gender and Sustainable Mountain Development in a Changing WorldnewsSome 170 policy makers, researchers and development practitioners from 27 countries came together for the government of Bhutan’s international conference on gender and sustainable mountain development in October. The conference, Bhutan+10: Gender and Sustainable Mountain Development in a Changing World, came a decade after Bhutan organized a global event entitled...
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Mountain Women in a post-Rio+20 worldnewsMountain women will come under the spotlight in October as the government of Bhutan holds an international conference on gender and sustainable mountain development. The conference, Bhutan+10: Gender and Sustainable Mountain Development in a Changing World, is being organized in the context of the Mountain Partnership with key support from the...
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The Mountain PartnershipnewsThe Mountain Partnership is a United Nations voluntary alliance of partners dedicated to improving the lives of mountain peoples and protecting mountain environments around the world. The partnership addresses the challenges that mountain regions are facing by tapping the wealth and diversity of resources, knowledge, information and expertise, in...
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