Seminario WinEED-LAERE-EfD: Women participation in Formal Decision-Making: Empirical Evidence from Participatory forest management in Ethiopia

Expositora: Anna Nordén. Assistant Professor in Economics at Jönköping International Business School (JIBS), Jönköping University

Abstract:

Amid growing emphasis on community-based approaches to natural resource management, there are concerns about the lack of women participation in communal decision-making. We analyze the association between participation of women in decision-making of forest user groups and several forest management outcomes. We combine longitudinal survey, administrative and forest inventory data and find that active participation of women (representation on the executive committee) is associated with greater forest benefits, and an improved (perceived and actual) condition of the forest. The association between (passive) women participation in group-level meetings and outcomes is not robust across alternative models. Using experimental data on alternative governance modalities, we also find that external (i.e. top-down) monitoring by the government increases women leadership at the group level.