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.

Red, the colour of prosperity for indigenous Ulikan rice farmers in the Philippines

news

It is 6.00 in the Pasil River Valley of Kalinga Province in the Philippine Cordillera. Lucious green mountains dotted with rice fields extend as far as the eye can see. Lita Caniw, 72, is headed to work at her six parcels of land in the Fummag Rice Terraces. Throughout her...

Call for inputs: 2020 MPS Annual Report

peak to peak

The February 2021 issue of Peak to Peak opens with a call for Mountain Partnership members to submit inputs for the Secretariat's 2020 Annual Report. This month, the 'Members' Voices' section features Farmer Tantoh of the Save Your Future Association in Cameroon. Top news stories from January focus on governments in...