Women and forests in India (original) (raw)
Related papers
In Search of a Canopy: Tribal Women's Livelihood in Forest-Based Industries in Rural India
2009
Tribal women known for their deep association with the forests are an economically active lot but nevertheless, they suffer disproportionately more from illiteracy, poverty and social abuse. Moreover many forest belts in India are becoming centres of militancy and civil strife because of improper designing of development programmes. The paper argues that more inclusive development in the present time of competition could come through formal integration of the tribal people with the forest-based economy at large that could give tribal women access to higher income and empowerment without distancing them from their roots. This would also mean reducing the high level of dependence on agriculture. Secondary data collected from a nation wide survey could provide a comparable and representative picture of the socio-economic states of tribal women in India, their formal dependence on the forest economy and the tendencies shown over time. Official data collected by a nationwide household su...
Women's role and contribution to forest-based livelihoods
2002
The analysis and policy recommendations of this Paper do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations, its Executive Board or its Member States Sub-Group on Sex Disaggregated Data of the IAWG on Gender and Development UNDP, 55, Lodi Estate, New Delhi 110003, India Website http://hdrc.undp.org.in UNESCO House B-5/29, Safdarjung Enclave New Delhi 110 029, India Website http://unescodelhi.nic.in e-mail newdelhi@unesco.org
IJMER, 2021
The forest-based economy is generally considered as a women's economy. Women are the primary gatherer of forest products. They collect the forest products for daily household consumption as well as for their livelihood. Their life and economy are completely interconnected with the forest, which directly impacts their socioeconomic and cultural life. In a nutshell, their life and livelihood are completely dependent factors on the forest, which poses many risks and challenges for their survival. Although several programs and policies have been formulated to support their livelihood, there is still no visible impact reflected in their socioeconomic lives. The research paper aims to explore various attributes of the forest-based activities among ST women in the Koraput district of Odisha like; their affiliation to the group, utilization of money derived from forest-based livelihood, and challenges that they face in forest-based livelihood. The paper also attempts to describe the potential forest products where entrepreneurship can be created among the tribal population by tapping their resources without much investment. Further, the paper intends to describe the government programs meant for entrepreneurship development in rural and tribal areas. Both primary and secondary data have been collected for this paper. Primary data are collected directly from the respondents who are depending upon forest products using a structured interview schedule and seasonal calendar as the participatory research method. The primary data reflects 93% of the respondents don't have any group that deals with forest-based activities. A majority, i.e., 93% of the respondent have not received any training related to forest products. 80% of the respondents fell financially well by doing forest-based livelihood activities. 83% of the respondents face challenges in forest-based activities out of which the majority of them are due to a lack of technical guidance for value addition and marketing. The paper concludes with some constructive recommendations for strengthening the socioeconomic life of tribal women at the grassroots level respecting their interdependence with the forest.
This study tries to examine as to whether gender sensitive planning under participatory forest management programme increases women’s contribution on household’s income by augmenting women’s physical involvement in forest works based on an empirical study in such an Indian state-West Bengal- which acts as key-precursor of the implementation of participatory forest management programme in general and gender sensitive participatory forest management programme in particular. Most important finding of this study is that under female-organised forest management unit (called female FPC) women are the major contributors to their family income, which they only receive from forest source, after JFM programme. However more worrying is that despite women’s major share of households income from female FPC villages in particular, male control over household’s income implying that this might undermine women’s empowerment and equity principle of people’s centered forest management programme.
2012
The effects of environmental degradation on livelihoods are significant in many parts of the developing world. This article attempts to quantify the impact of deforestation on women’s work burden in the eastern Himalayas through a primary survey in three villages of Arunachal Pradesh, a state in India. Our findings suggest that although deforestation increases women’s work in forest-related collection and gathering activities, the net impacts are also mediated through processes of commercialization of the subsistence economy. While women share a disproportionately higher work burden in terms of the time spent in collection and processing of forest products, commercialization of some products has also resulted in higher participation of men in collection, marketing, and transport activities. It was found that the quality of village forest is a strong factor in reducing women’s total work burden. Forest degradation increases the work burden of women, as does the distance of agricultural land from house, and dependence on shifting cultivation.
Optimizing Women’s assertion of Forest Rights: An Initiative from Odisha
2015
Women play a critical role in the conservation and management of forest resources simultaneously deriving their livelihood from the forest. In the context of India, Agarwal (1994) mentioned that women’s rights under forest tenure reform are not given priority and which resulted in discrimination within the family due to inheritance laws and alienation of rights and control over property. Further an extensive study undertaken by Bose (2011) among the Bhil community of Rajasthan revealed that the Bhil women have low level of on ground participation vis-a-vis control over, formulation of rules relating to the forest management and its commercial exploitation despite them having the maximum work relating to conservation and management of the forest.
DRAFT-WCA2014-Kamla Khanal- University of Nottingham- Forest Rights, Gender & Agroforestry-Odisha
Of late many indigenous men and women or their families in India have obtained forest land titles and use rights; either under a joint title or an individual title (in case of a single women or men); additionally, a number of village assemblies are also applying for Community Forest Resources (CFRe) titles under the newly enacted the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act. This article aims to bring out the genderbased concerns arising out of the implementation of the act with references to previous work on women land rights in India. Efforts have been made to review and deliberate on the issues of existing and emerging landuse in these newly allotted forestland parcels and if this is also influenced by the gender of the title holder? Initial investigation and literature review shows that there exists a clear gap in discussions concerning gender inclusion within the FRA and its implementation.
Tribal women's empowerment through the Forest Rights Act, 2006 in southern Rajasthan
Asian Journal of Women's Studies, 2019
The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, or the Forest Rights Act (FRA) 2006, recognizes tribal women’s rights to own land equal to those of men. In exploring whether women’s rights to forest land and resources has led to their improved socioeconomic status, this paper examines two key facets of the process of empowerment—“access to resources” and “women’s agency.” As access to resources required to meet household and other needs, such as water, cooking fuel, or health facilities have remained poor, access to land under the Act has been able to make only a marginal difference to the economic status of the women who have received plots. But the new found confidence of women for no longer being considered asset-less was clearly evident; this was especially true for widowed women. By gaining land ownership, women have begun questioning entrenched social practices such as polygyny. While the Act has failed to encourage women to participate in the public domain actively, the improvement in their social engagements and mobility has been attributed to training and access to information, facilitated by community based organizations.
Neoliberal development policies premised on resource diversion for commercial exploitation have accelerated economic growth in India, while alienating forest-dwelling Scheduled Tribes from their resource base and livelihood options. For women, the ensuing displacement, impoverishment and transformation of cultural ethos has translated to a loss in status, reduced income and independent access to resources. In order to arrest the growing inequality particularly in the conditions of tribal women, this paper posits that development should be oriented towards the equitable distribution of land and forest resources to Scheduled Tribes and marginalized constituencies within them. Existing interventions approach rights to natural resources from three directions: to strengthen due process guarantees in land acquisition, to grant formal recognition to tribal customary rights over forests, and to equalize women’s individual resource ownership. These interventions either neglect or actively contribute to impoverishment and underdevelopment for women in tribal communities by failing to account for the multiple avenues of marginalization and emancipation in their struggle for control over resources: the state, market and community. To meet a transformative distributive agenda, I preliminarily frame a three-pronged intervention in this paper, in material distribution of resources, political empowerment and cultural change. This marks the first step in a deeper empirical analysis of formal, semi-formal and informal legal rules in distributing rights and access to resources to particularly marginalized constituencies within Scheduled Tribes, in order to alter the course of the prevailing development paradigm.