Why Gender Integration in Natural Resource Management is Good for Sustainability

Emeritus Professor Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt, AO

Resource, Environment & Development Program

Crawford School of Public Policy

The Australian National University

Gender: The Blind Spot in the Anthropocene

The management of the Earth’s natural resources, its forests, waters, soils, and biodiversity, stands as the defining challenge of the twenty-first century. As humanity navigates the Anthropocene, a geological epoch characterised by significant human impact on Earth’s geology and ecosystems, the governance of these resources has shifted from a peripheral concern to a central pillar of global geopolitical and economic stability. However, for decades, the prevailing paradigm of Natural Resource Management (NRM) has been characterised by a technocratic, gender-blind approach. This approach, rooted in the assumption that environmental interventions affect all populations equally, has systematically obscured the distinct roles, responsibilities, and knowledge systems that differentiate men’s and women’s interactions with the natural world.

Current research reveals that this blindness is not merely a social oversight but a fundamental flaw in ecological governance. The evidence suggests that gender is a critical determinant of environmental sustainability, economic efficiency, and community resilience. The exclusion of women from NRM is empirically linked to suboptimal conservation outcomes, lower agricultural productivity, and weakened climate resilience. Conversely, integrating women into environmental decision-making, from village councils to corporate boardrooms, acts as a force multiplier for sustainability.

This report provides an exhaustive examination of why gender is crucial to NRM. It synthesises data from forestry, agriculture, hydrology, and indigenous studies to demonstrate that gender equality is not solely a matter of human rights but a prerequisite for a sustainable world. By analysing the structural dynamics of the gender-environment nexus, this document argues that closing the gender gap is the single most effective leverage point for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly the intersection of Gender Equality (SDG 5) and Life on Land (SDG 15).¹

Deconstructing the Gender-Environment Nexus

To fully grasp the necessity of gender in NRM, one must move beyond the simplistic view of women as victims of environmental degradation and understand the complex structural dynamics that define their relationship with the environment. This relationship is mediated by social norms, economic constraints, and legal frameworks that assign different values to the labour and knowledge of other genders.

The Division of Labour and Environmental Interaction

In the vast majority of rural contexts, the division of labour is sharply gendered, creating distinct spheres of influence within the landscape. This division is not accidental but is rooted in the reproductive economy, the unpaid care work that sustains households and communities.

Women are disproportionately responsible for the reproductive economy, which necessitates direct, daily interaction with natural capital. In many developing regions, particularly in the Global South, women and girls are the primary collectors of water, firewood, and wild edibles. For example, in the Asia-Pacific region, rural communities depend heavily on forests and healthy soils for socioeconomic development, with women often acting as the primary stewards of these assets to ensure family survival.³ This role creates a direct feedback loop: environmental degradation immediately increases women’s labour burden. When a forest is logged or a water source polluted, it is the woman who must walk farther to find clean water or fuel, reducing the time available for education, income generation, or political participation.⁵

Conversely, men’s roles are often aligned with the productive economy, characterised by the extraction of resources for market sale—timber logging, commercial fishing, and large-scale cash crop agriculture. While this is a generalisation, the distinct motivations (subsistence vs. profit) lead to different conservation priorities. Men may prioritise rapid harvests for cash income to purchase market goods. At the same time, women, concerned with the long-term availability of household fuel and water, often favour conservation and sustainable use rates.³

The Political Ecology of Time Poverty

A critical yet often overlooked aspect of NRM is the economy of time. Structural inequalities place women at a severe disadvantage regarding time allocation, a phenomenon known as time poverty. The degradation of natural resources exacerbates this inequality.

When natural resources are mismanaged, the time required for women to collect essentials increases. This has profound political and ecological implications. When women are time-poor, they are less able to participate in community governance meetings where rules about resource management are set. Consequently, management rules are designed by men who may not be aware of the specific conditions of the water sources or fuel stocks that women utilise. This exclusion creates blind spots in management plans, leading to overuse of resources or to the protection of commercially valuable species at the expense of species vital to household subsistence. Thus, the cycle of degradation reinforces the cycle of exclusion.⁵

Access vs. Control: The Tenure Trap

A defining feature of the gender-NRM nexus is the gap between the use of resources and the control over them. While women are often the primary users and managers of land and water, they rarely hold secure tenure rights.

In nearly 80% of countries with available data, fewer than half of women have ownership or secure rights to agricultural land.¹ This lack of tenure creates a tenure trap that undermines sustainability. Without a formal land title, women cannot access credit markets. Without credit, they cannot invest in climate-smart agricultural technologies, soil conservation methods, or irrigation systems.⁸ Furthermore, secure tenure is correlated with long-term environmental stewardship. When farmers lack secure rights, they are incentivised to maximise short-term yields, often at the cost of soil health. Because women often farm on marginal lands with insecure usufruct rights, they are structurally discouraged from planting trees or building terraces that yield benefits over the long term. Reforming land tenure systems to ensure women’s rights is therefore a direct intervention for soil conservation and land restoration.²

Agriculture: The Primary Interface of Gender and Ecology

Agriculture is the primary interface between human activity and the biosphere. It is also a sector rife with gender-based inefficiencies that hold back global sustainability. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and other bodies have established a clear causal link between gender equality in agriculture and improved environmental and economic outcomes.

The Productivity Gap and Global GDP

The gender gap in agriculture refers to the difference in access to productive resources—seeds, fertiliser, tools, water, and knowledge—between male and female farmers. Women make up roughly 43% of the agricultural labour force in developing countries, yet they produce 20-30% less per hectare than men. This gap is not due to a lack of skill or effort, but purely due to a lack of inputs.⁹

Closing this productivity gap is not merely a social welfare issue; it is a macroeconomic driver with profound environmental implications. FAO data indicates that giving women the same access to productive resources as men would increase farm yields by 20–30%. This surge in productivity would raise total agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5–4%, which, in turn, could reduce the number of hungry people worldwide by 12–17% (approximately 45 million people).⁹

A broader analysis suggests that closing gender gaps in farm productivity and wages across agrifood systems would boost global GDP by 1%—nearly $1 trillion.⁹ This economic surplus is crucial for sustainability. It provides nations with fiscal space to invest in sustainable development, environmental restoration, and climate adaptation. Furthermore, increasing yields on existing land reduces the pressure to expand agriculture into forests and other fragile ecosystems, thereby acting as an indirect mechanism for forest conservation.

The Feminisation of Agriculture and Land Management

A major demographic shift known as the feminisation of agriculture is underway globally, particularly in Latin America, parts of Asia, and Africa. Men are increasingly migrating to urban centres for industrial work, leaving women behind to manage farms and rural households.

However, this shift often occurs without a corresponding change in legal rights or decision-making power. While women do the labour, decision-making power and legal ownership often remain with absent men. This disconnect poses a severe threat to sustainability. If the person working the land (the woman) cannot make decisions about crop rotation, tree planting, or water investment without the absentee owner’s (the man’s) permission, the land suffers from reactive rather than proactive management.

The effects of environmental stress, such as those caused by climate change, further intensify women’s workloads and decrease household assets in these contexts. Male migration exacerbates this by leaving women with increased responsibility but diminished resources.¹¹ Policies that acknowledge this feminisation and transfer decision-making power and legal titles to women are essential to prevent land degradation in these migration corridors.¹¹

Agrobiodiversity and Seed Sovereignty

Beyond yield quantity, the quality and diversity of agricultural management change with gender integration. Men and women often manage different crops and different plots, leading to distinct biodiversity outcomes.

Women are frequently the custodians of agrobiodiversity. While commercial monocultures (often managed by men for market sale) focus on high-yield cash crops, women’s kitchen gardens or subsistence plots tend to harbour a wider variety of indigenous plant species, legumes, and vegetables to ensure dietary diversity for the family. This practice creates genetic reservoirs that are crucial for resilience against pests and climate shocks.¹³

Indigenous women, in particular, play a vital role in seed selection and preservation. Their Traditional Knowledge enables them to identify and propagate varieties resistant to drought, flooding, and local pests. This in situ conservation of genetic resources is a service to global food security, providing the genetic material needed to breed resilient crops for a warming world. The loss of women’s land rights often leads to the loss of these gardens and the genetic heritage they contain.

Adoption of Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA)

Research indicates that women are often more receptive to adopting specific Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) practices, particularly those that ensure household food security and reduce labour. However, their ability to adopt these practices is hampered by limited access to credit and extension services.

When interventions are designed to bypass these barriers—such as providing micro-credit or gender-targeted extension services—adoption rates of soil-restoring practices increase. For example, in the Asia-Pacific region, facilitating women’s participation in agricultural value chains has been shown to increase incomes and promote the uptake of sustainable technologies. By enabling women to enter into higher-value-added functions, they can secure the capital needed to invest in long-term farm resilience.¹¹

Forestry: The Critical Mass for Regeneration

Perhaps the most compelling evidence of gender’s impact on sustainability comes from the forestry sector. Forests are critical carbon sinks, biodiversity hotspots, and regulators of the global water cycle. The governance of community forests offers a natural experiment in how gender composition in decision-making affects biological outcomes.

Statistical Evidence from South Asia

Seminal research by economist Bina Agarwal and others has statistically demonstrated the link between women’s participation in forest governance and improved forest condition. Analysing data from community forestry institutions (CFIs) in India and Nepal, studies found that groups with a high proportion of women in their Executive Committees (ECs) showed significantly greater improvements in forest regeneration and canopy growth.¹⁵

The research found that groups with all-women ECs in the Nepal sample had better forest regeneration and canopy growth than other groups, despite often managing much smaller, more degraded forests. This finding challenges the assumption that women, who rely on forests for firewood, would be the primary agents of degradation. Instead, it proves that when given authority, women are effective regenerators of the landscape.¹⁵

Mechanisms of Improved Governance

Why does women’s presence improve the forest? The answer lies in the specific nature of women’s interaction with the forest and their role in the community.

Surveillance and Protection: Women enter the forest daily to collect firewood and fodder. They are the eyes on the ground. When they are part of the governance structure, their observations of illegal cuttings or encroaching degradation can be immediately translated into enforcement action. Men, who may enter the forest less frequently or for different purposes (e.g., occasional timber harvest), may miss these early warning signs of degradation.⁶
Rule Compliance and Design: All-male committees often set strict rules banning entry to the forest to allow regeneration. However, these rules are frequently ignored by women who have no other source of fuel. This leads to a dynamic of conflict and covert degradation. When women are included in the rule-making, they help design more nuanced rules (e.g., allowing the collection of fallen branches but banning axe-cutting) that are practical and socially enforceable. This leads to higher compliance rates and better protection.⁷
Conflict Resolution: Women often utilise informal networks and social persuasion to ensure compliance, which can be more effective than the punitive measures often favoured by all-male groups. This soft power is crucial for the long-term sustainability of common-pool resource management institutions.

‘Critical Mass’ Theory and Strictness

It is not enough to have a token woman on a committee. The research supports ‘Critical Mass Theory,’ which holds that women must constitute a significant minority (often cited as 33% or more) to influence decisions effectively.

In groups where women were mere tokens, their voices were often ignored, or they were too intimidated to speak. In groups with a critical mass, women supported one another, bringing forward issues related to sustainable extraction and species diversity that men had overlooked.⁶

Contrary to the assumption that women would be lenient because they need the wood, research found that groups with more women on the Executive Committee enacted stricter rules on resource extraction in many districts. They understood that depletion would hurt them most in the long run, demonstrating a high degree of intergenerational discount rate, that is, valuing the future availability of the resource over immediate ease.⁷

Biodiversity and Species Selection

Gender also influences what is conserved. Men and women often value different species based on their distinct roles.

Timber vs. Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs): Men often prioritise commercially valuable timber species (e.g., teak or pine). Women often prioritise trees that provide fuel, fodder, fruit, and medicine.
Ecological Complexity: A forest managed exclusively by men might become a monoculture timber plantation (low biodiversity). A forest managed with women’s input tends to retain a diverse understory of shrubs and varied tree species, meeting multiple household needs. This results in a forest with higher overall biodiversity and ecological complexity.³For example, in the Peruvian Amazon, indigenous women are leading restoration efforts by replanting specific native species like the Ishpingo tree. Their selection is based on a holistic understanding of the ecosystem’s needs and cultural utility, driving the recovery of vital forest cover and ecosystem services.¹⁷

Water Resource Management (WRM): Governance, Health, and Efficiency

Water is a finite resource under immense pressure from population growth, pollution, and climate change. The management of water systems—whether for irrigation or domestic use—is another arena where gender integration leads to superior technical and social outcomes.

The Efficiency of Water User Associations (WUAs)

Water User Associations (WUAs) are local bodies that manage irrigation infrastructure and water allocation. Historically male-dominated, these groups have seen improved performance when women are included.

Studies in India, Malawi, and Uganda show that women’s participation in Water Management Groups (WMGs) leads to improved irrigation access and financial discipline. Women were found to be effective in collecting water fees and maintaining transparency, which is vital for the economic sustainability of the water system.¹⁸

Furthermore, women’s involvement in decision-making has been linked to better conflict resolution regarding water distribution. Their focus often leans towards equitable access for all households rather than prioritising large landholders, leading to greater community cohesion. In India, research indicated that while men frequently focused on the engineering aspects of irrigation, women emphasised the equitable timing of water releases to ensure that tail-end users (often the poorest farmers) received their share.¹⁹

Domestic Water, Sanitation, and Health

Women are responsible for 80% of water collection in households without piped water.²⁰ This places them at the centre of the water-health-environment nexus.

When women are excluded from the design of water systems, the infrastructure often fails to meet user needs. Common failures include pump handles that are too heavy for women to operate or well locations that are unsafe or culturally inappropriate. These design failures lead to the abandonment of the infrastructure and a return to using unsafe natural water sources, increasing the spread of waterborne diseases.

Lack of safely managed sanitation affects women disproportionately due to privacy and safety needs. The pollution of water sources by extractive industries or poor agricultural runoff impacts the care economy first, as women must care for sick family members. Therefore, women are often the fiercest advocates for protecting water quality and controlling pollution. Integrating their voices into water governance is essential for identifying and mitigating pollution sources that men might overlook.⁵

Policy Failures and Successes

Despite the evidence, the water sector remains heavily masculinised. A World Bank study found that only 20% of new hires in water utility companies were female.²⁰ This lack of representation in the formal sector means that high-level water policies often fail to address the ground-level realities of water management.

However, interventions that have mandated women’s inclusion have shown that women are not just beneficiaries of water but active agents of water security. For example, women-led disaster committees in Colombia mapped flood risks and identified evacuation routes that men had missed, proving that gendered knowledge saves lives.²¹

Traditional Ecological Knowledge: The Gendered Encyclopedia

Traditional Ecological Knowledge refers to the cumulative body of knowledge, practice, and belief that evolves through adaptive processes and is handed down through generations. Crucially, TEK is gendered. Men and women hold different, distinct chapters of this encyclopedia. Losing the female chapter leads to a fragmented, ineffective understanding of the ecosystem.

Distinct Knowledge Domains

Women’s Knowledge (Biodiversity and Medicine): Women’s TEK often focuses on plant species diversity, medicinal herbs, wild edibles, and seed selection. In Indigenous communities, women are usually the custodians of seed banks, possessing the genetic knowledge of which varieties are resistant to drought or pests. For example, Indigenous women in the Amazon possess deep knowledge of medicinal plants and sustainable gathering methods that are critical for biodiversity conservation.¹³
Men’s Knowledge (Hunting and Timber): Men’s TEK often centres on animal migration patterns, hunting territories, and timber resources. While valuable, relying solely on this knowledge leads to management plans that focus on macro resources while ignoring the micro resources (herbs, shrubs, insects) that sustain the ecosystem’s base.²²

Case Study: Fire Management and the Karuk Tribe

The management of fire landscapes provides a striking example of gendered TEK and the consequences of its suppression. Historically, in the Karuk Tribe of California, fire was a tool used by both genders, but for different ends. Men burned remote hunting grounds to keep improved visibility and forage for game. Women, however, were responsible for burning near-village areas and specific patches of hazelnut shrubs and bear grass. Why? Because burning these plants stimulates the growth of straight, flexible shoots required for basket weaving—a central cultural and economic activity.²⁴

This cultural burning practised by women did more than produce basket materials; it cleared underbrush, recycled nutrients, and created fire-breaks that protected villages from larger wildfires. The suppression of these practices by colonial laws (which viewed fire solely as a threat to timber) degraded the ecosystem, leading to the buildup of fuel loads and the catastrophic mega-fires seen today.

Today, the revitalisation of these practices, led by Indigenous women and men, is recognised as a vital strategy for climate resilience and forest health. It demonstrates that Indigenous women’s cultural practices are often sophisticated ecological management systems.²⁶

The Loss of Knowledge and Epistemic Violence

When development projects or conservation schemes ignore women, they inadvertently destroy this knowledge. If a protected area forbids the collection of minor forest produce, women stop entering the forest. The intergenerational transmission of knowledge—stories, songs, and rituals about plant identification—is severed.

This epistemic violence leads to a loss of local biodiversity knowledge that is nearly impossible to recover. Thus, gender-inclusive policies are a preservation mechanism for human knowledge systems that are compatible with biodiversity.²⁸

Climate Change: Vulnerability, Resilience, and Adaptation

Climate change acts as a threat multiplier, exacerbating existing inequalities. Its impacts are not gender-neutral. However, framing women solely as victims ignores their potent role as agents of resilience and adaptation.

The Vulnerability Paradox

Women and girls face unique risks due to climate shocks.

Disaster Mortality: In many disasters, women experience higher mortality rates than men. This is due to social norms (e.g., inability to swim, restrictive clothing, behavioural restrictions on leaving the house without a male guardian) and their role as caregivers, often staying behind to save children or elderly relatives.²⁹
Post-Disaster Burdens: After a disaster, the burden of care explodes. With water systems destroyed and food scarce, women’s workload increases exponentially, leading to severe physical and mental health deterioration.

Women as Architects of Resilience: The JEEViKA Case

Despite these vulnerabilities, women are often the first to adapt. A prime example is the JEEViKA program in Bihar, India, a flood-prone region.

The program mobilised nearly 10 million women into self-help groups. These groups became the engine of resilience. Women adopted flood-tolerant livelihoods, such as raised-bed vegetable cultivation and goat rearing (movable assets during floods). Because these women controlled finances through their groups, they could quickly recover income after floodwaters receded, reducing the community’s overall vulnerability to future shocks. This demonstrates that when women are organised and economically empowered, they can transform the resilience profile of an entire region.²¹

Diversification and Risk Management

While men often focus on a single cash crop (high risk/high return), women tend to diversify income streams (small livestock, handicrafts, diverse crops). This portfolio approach is the essence of economic resilience in an unpredictable climate. By diversifying livelihoods, women buffer the household against the failure of any single sector in the face of climate shocks.

Disaster Preparedness and Early Warning

Women’s networks are effective early warning systems. In many communities, women communicate changes in water levels and weather patterns through informal networks more quickly than through official channels. Integrating these networks into formal disaster risk reduction (DRR) plans is critical for saving lives. Women’s involvement in disaster committees ensures that shelters, water points, and evacuation plans reflect the needs of entire families, not just the able-bodied men.³⁰

Corporate Governance and Environmental Performance

The relevance of gender to sustainability extends beyond the rural village to the corporate boardroom. A growing body of research links gender diversity in corporate leadership to better Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance.

The ‘VRIN’ Resource

In management theory, gender diversity is considered a Valuable, Rare, Imperfectly Imitable, and Non-substitutable (VRIN) resource. Diverse boards bring diverse perspectives that prevent ‘groupthink’. Empirical research using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) has found that organisations with diverse leadership teams are more likely to implement robust sustainability policies. They tend to have better environmental compliance, reduced carbon footprints, and enhanced stakeholder engagement. The presence of women on boards is positively correlated with the disclosure of carbon emissions data and the adoption of green technologies.³¹

Long-Term Horizons and Risk Management

Studies suggest that women leaders often exhibit a longer-term time horizon compared to their male counterparts. This aligns with the nature of environmental investments, which require upfront costs for long-term payoffs. Consequently, gender-balanced boards are more likely to approve investments in green technology or supply chain sustainability that may not yield immediate quarterly profits but ensure the firm’s long-term viability.³²Furthermore, diverse teams are better at risk assessment. In the context of natural resources, this means better anticipation of regulatory changes regarding climate change or resource scarcity. Gender diversity enhances an organisation’s bargaining power with green partners, facilitating collaborations that drive industry-wide sustainability standards.³³

Conclusion: The Strategic Imperative

The question ‘Why is gender crucial to natural resource management that leads to a more sustainable world?” yields a multi-dimensional answer that spans biology, economics, and sociology.

Ecological Necessity: Women possess unique, location-specific ecological knowledge that is complementary to men’s knowledge. Excluding this knowledge leads to incomplete and often destructive management plans.
Economic Efficiency: The gender gap in access to resources causes massive inefficiencies in agriculture. Closing this gap could unlock $1 trillion in global GDP and feed millions, reducing the pressure to degrade new lands.
Governance Effectiveness: Women’s participation in forestry and water governance leads to stricter rule enforcement, better financial management, and conflict resolution, resulting in measurable improvements in forest canopy and water access.
Resilience: Women are the primary architects of household and community resilience against climate shocks. Their empowerment is the most effective insurance policy against the destabilising effects of a warming world.

The Path Forward

Achieving a sustainable world requires a paradigm shift from gender-blind to gender-transformative NRM. This involves:

Legal Reform: Dismantling discriminatory land and inheritance laws to grant women secure tenure.
Institutional Change: Mandating critical mass participation of women in all environmental decision-making bodies, from village water committees to national climate ministries.
Data Revolution: Collecting gender-disaggregated environmental data to make the invisible visible.
Financing: Directing climate finance to women’s grassroots organisations that are already doing the work of restoration.

Gender equality is not merely a social goal to be pursued after we have saved the planet; it is the mechanism by which we save it. The evidence is irrefutable: a sustainable world is an equal world.

Comparative Data and Analysis Tables

Table 1: Economic and Social Impacts of Closing the Gender Gap in Agriculture

The following table summarises the projected global impacts if women in developing countries had the same access to productive resources as men.

Indicator	Projected Impact of Closing the Gender Gap	Specific Mechanism	Source
Global GDP	Increase by ~1% (~$1 Trillion USD)	Increased agricultural productivity leads to broader economic growth and consumption.	⁹
Agricultural Output	Increase by 2.5% – 4.0% in developing countries.	Women’s yields per hectare would match men’s (currently 20-30% lower due to resource gaps).	¹²
Food Security	Reduction in hungry people by ~45 million (12-17%)	Higher food availability and lower prices; increased household income for food purchase.	⁹
Resilience	Increased resilience for 235 million people	If development interventions focused on women, household assets and buffers would increase.	⁹

Table 2: Gendered Domains of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK)

This table illustrates the distinct ecological knowledge domains typically held by men and women, highlighting the risks of excluding either perspective.

Domain	Predominant Male Knowledge Focus	Predominant Female Knowledge Focus	Ecological Consequence of Exclusion
Forestry	Timber species, hunting grounds, large-scale extraction, remote territories.	Fuelwood species, fodder, medicinal herbs, wild edibles, village-adjacent territories.	Loss of understory biodiversity; degradation of medicinal plant stocks; ‘empty forest’ syndrome due to loss of habitat for small fauna.
Agriculture	Cash crops, monocultures, plowing techniques, irrigation machinery.	Seed selection (genetic diversity), post-harvest processing, kitchen gardens, pest management.	Loss of agrobiodiversity; increased vulnerability to crop failure; loss of indigenous seed banks; erosion of culinary traditions.
Water	Irrigation infrastructure construction, large-scale distribution engineering.	Water quality assessment, household sanitation, health impacts, small-scale management.	Infrastructure failure due to poor design (e.g., heavy pumps); increased waterborne disease; inefficient fee collection.
Fire	Hazard reduction, visibility for hunting, and landscape-scale suppression.	Cultural burning for basketry materials, clearing gathering grounds, and promoting food security.	Fuel load buildup leading to catastrophic fires; loss of cultural resources (e.g., basketry materials); biodiversity loss in the understory.
Source	²²	¹³	³

Table 3: Barriers to Women’s Effective Participation in NRM

This table categorises the structural barriers that prevent women from contributing their knowledge and labour to sustainable management, along with their specific environmental impacts.

Barrier Category	Specific Manifestation	Impact on NRM
Structural/Legal	Lack of land tenure; discriminatory inheritance laws.	Inability to access credit for green technology; lack of incentive for long-term soil conservation.¹
Social/Cultural	Time poverty due to unpaid care work; restrictive social norms.	Inability to attend governance meetings; exclusion from rule-making processes; management plans that ignore women’s needs.⁵
Institutional	Masculinised forestry/water departments; old boys’ networks.	Policy blind spots regarding women’s resource use; tokenistic participation without real power; lack of gender-responsive budgeting.²⁰
Economic	Wage gaps, lack of access to markets and technology.	Lower agricultural productivity; reliance on unsustainable extraction for survival; inability to diversify livelihoods.⁹

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