The Study On Rural Women's Participation In The Community Forestry In China

The purpose of the paper is to study and explore the extent of women's participation in the community forest management in China and the roles of the key stakeholders, such as government, forestry administration, local community and NGOs in ensuring the expected level of women's participation in decision-making process. In this regard, a combination of qualitative methods and case study has been adopted.The study is developed on the basis of various theories, which including gender analyze, people's participation, social capital and nature resource management and the community forestry as well. Based on the analyze of the role of certain factors of political, social and cultural and institutional, which influenced women's participation in the community forestry, the relationships among the women participants, government, NGOs, village administration, and socio-economic background of rural women have been explored.The finding also shows that those factors are main reasons that would influence and affect the identification of participants in the community forestry programs and participation level. The above mentioned questions are addressed in the light of people's participation as concept and analyze framework, as well as on the basis of state -citizen relationship, and theories of social capital.The study found that the women's participation in the community forestry illustrates the dissonance between myths and reality. The performance of the community forestry in achieving the participatory goals was poor. A number of common institutional and social problems seem to have shaped the performance. Participation of the main target group, the local farmers, women and disadvantaged group of the society is minimal and lower level in the project. Traditional ideas about the role of man and women in family and community, Gender-blind policy and rules, lack of representative and voice in decision sector and government, weak influence of women's organization, lack of trust to the forestry sector and NGOs ineffective role, lack of information, chance and resource , poor socio-economic background, all of those factors contribute to women's poor participation in the community forestry.The relationship among the stakeholders and bureaucracy is found as the most dominate because this vicious network impede the extent of women's participation from the very beginning of the community forestry project to the last and demolish that objectives of the government dreadfully.The suggestions of policy design and institutional building to promote women's participation also were offered as following on the basis of the research. First, the level of women's organization and the capacity of institutional should be enhanced and make women's participation as a part of the manage system of the community forestry to improve women's participation. Second, Women's capacity of participation also needed to be improved with the principal of share the information and benefit. Third, establishing the mechanism of gender equality and increasing the number of women in decision body, and to keep the consistency and function of policy, improve the gender awareness of policy maker and keep the policy mainstreaming under procedure and budget are also necessary for women's participation. Forth, The friendly environment for women' participation also very important, such as to enhance women' rights and interest of participation with legislation and rules, to aware the gender equality and build the equality environment for man and women through media; to enhance the role of government who is a key stakeholder to promote women's participation and rebuild the relationship between women and government by empowering women, recognizing the knowledge and experience of the local farmers and women, increasing the trust between women and government, and building the support network and the communication mechanism of women's participation and so on.