We have all heard, perhaps, the Chinese notion that ‘women hold up half the sky’; but I had not heard the analogy comparing current development practice with ‘working with one hand tied behind your back’. Andy White, of the Rights and Resources Initiative, quoted this notion as part of an introduction to a two day workshop on ‘Gender Justice’, which was designed to help their coalition strategize about how to address gender more effectively. He, like the other participants in the room, regretted the waste of the female half of humanity’s talent, energies, and capabilities—largely absent in current efforts to make the world a better place.
The group began by thinking about some definitions, as these related to their concern with gender and land/forest rights. What did we or should we mean by ‘gender justice’? Did we prefer to focus on equality or equity, and what were the differences? What about ‘women’s rights’ vs. a gender focus? Should men be a part of the focus or not? Should RRI address communal rights or individual rights? Both? What about forest vs. land tenure? How should we deal with the overlaps between customary rights and statutory rights on the one hand, and the fact that both tend to ignore women’s rights in forests/land on the other? We didn’t come to final conclusions about these vexing issues in this meeting—it was an early scoping exercise for RRI to consider what to take into account as they determined their future strategy.
But fascinating differences emerged within the group (with one commonality: that there were problems with women’s access to resources everywhere). In China, despite considerable differences from place to place, the hegemony of the central government was quite clear. Our participant from China had to laugh at the improbability of following one colleague’s suggestion to bring grass roots pressure on the central government to strengthen gender equity in forests, as had been so effective in Nepal. Impossible in today’s China. We heard from an indigenous man from Nicaragua, who was struggling with efforts to collaboratively manage the recently acknowledged ‘indigenous territory’ that was now populated by a variety of ethnic groups, divided among three powerful political parties. Women’s interests differed from village to village, and people tended to coalesce around party politics rather than think through issues independently or by community. Although much discussion centered around large scale ‘land grabs’ and their observed and likely impacts on women, there were also concerns from Indonesia about small scale mining that was obliterating forest gardens and spreading mercury into rivers from which local and downstream inhabitants obtained food and water.
RRI is not a research group, though they do secondary research to ascertain global trends and advocate for change, and they support action research at the local level by national partners. We spent a long time brainstorming about how to do a global assessment of women’s access to land and forests, similar to what RRI had produced for tenure in general. RRI had struggled with the forest tenure question, eventually using FAO’s national statistics, even though all agreed that these under-represented local people’s day-to-day access, management, even informal (customary) ownership. ‘National forest estates’ in the tropics are full of people making a living from swidden agriculture and who may have elaborate traditional tenure systems in operation. But even this not-entirely-satisfactory attempt to assess changes in tenure worldwide is not an option for assessing gendered access to forest resources: the data gaps are far more dramatic in the gender realm. There are efforts to address this data lacuna: Data are being collected now within the GAAP, Gender Agriculture and Assets Project, from the International Food Policy Research Institute; some have mined the International Forestry Resources and Institutions dataset, which has a longer time frame but which is not global in scope. But there is no dataset comparable to FAO’s statistics, which were used in the repeated tenure assessments. We brainstormed about ways to extrapolate from the case studies that do exist. More ‘food’ for the RRI brains to process.
Besides the stimulating discussions, there were personal pleasures: I met for the first time Jane Carter, whose participation work I’d used for decades and with whom I’d been in email correspondence for many years. We ‘clicked’ in person, as we had long distance. Solange Bandiaky (from Senegal), whose work I’d reviewed for a CIFOR/Earthscan book, helped lead this group. Another pleasure to meet her!
I reunited with Omaira Bolaňos, the organizer of this meeting. She had worked with me on CIFOR’s Adaptive Collaborative Management Program in its Bolivian manifestation ten years earlier—at the very beginning of her professional life. Mia Siscawati had come to my Bogor office in the mid 1990s, with another then-very young woman, Latifah, to ask if I ‘knew anything about gender in forests’ and could help them think about such issues in Indonesia. Since that time, she has gotten a PhD in anthropology in the US, focusing on women’s studies (and produced four children!)—now teaching at the prestigious University of Indonesia. We discussed the possibility of her coming to Cornell to work together while she writes up some of her findings about women, forests and land in Indonesia. And Esther Mwangi, one of my many CIFOR bosses and a good friend (who lives in the house my husband and I rented for our last four years in Bogor), was there as well. We enjoyed sharing stories about CIFOR, catching up—though time was short and I wished there was more chance to talk. Cecile Njebet came from Cameroon, where she collaborates with some CIFOR colleagues.
And of course I met new people: Xaobei from China, Eleanor from the Philippines, Ann from Uganda, Ceferino (the lone man) from Nicaragua, Lina from Ecuador, Bharati from Nepal, Praba from Canada. RRI had arranged translation for Ceferino and Lina, whose language was Spanish; and we had two amusing identical twin interpreters (we were corrected when we referred to their actions as ‘translating’: apparently translating is for written materials; interpreting is for the spoken word). One evening we all ate together and heard praise for Augusta Molnar (another old friend), who plans to retire to Colorado—the testimonies suggest she will be sorely missed at RRI! Another evening, we discovered that we could order Pisco Sours (reminding me of times in Bolivia with Omaira) and then caipirinhas (prompting pleasant memories of work visits to Brazil).
A good professional meeting is a combination of intellectual stimulation and the expansion and strengthening of personal connections with other human beings. This one fit the bill. I left wishing RRI good luck in crafting a viable strategy for this important issue. They’ve made a good start, and they have good people to carry it forward—both in Washington, DC and elsewhere.