WOMEN’S PARTICIPATION IN ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION: COUNTRY BASED HISTORICAL INFORMATION

Abstract

Gender mainstreaming is the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in all areas and at all levels. It is a strategy for making women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmers in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality.” Gender-responsive budgeting is a tool that can be used to ensure that programme and project budgets are based on the recognition that the needs of women and men, while sometimes the same, can also be different, and that, when they are different, allocations should reflect this. Women are more environmentally aware and engage more in environmental protection activities such as recycling, reuse and environmentally conscious shopping. Women’s indigenous knowledge and experiences are unrecognized, especially in policy-making and decision-making processes. This is in addition to other factors such as illiteracy, poverty, economic that constrain their effectiveness as decision makers. Consequently, women’s voices remain unheard despite their being key stakeholders. Given that the main discussion points regarding diagnostics and recommendations for future action have been already summarized above, this section will only mention a few highlights.