in Latin America and East Africa

Women’s participation in decision making at the user-group level and in forest committees has been demonstrated to have a positive impact on forest sustainability. For example, women’s participation enhances forest regeneration and reduces illegal harvesting through improved monitoring. Their presence in forest user groups increases the groups’ capacity to manage and resolve conflict, which in turn increases the likelihood that resource users will comply with and respect harvesting and use rules. These insights have been especially useful in informing policy and project interventions designed to strength and amplify women’s participation. This paper adopts a cross-national approach and employs quantitative techniques to analyze the relative performance of groups with different male-female composition (female-dominated, mixed-gender, and male dominated user groups) in forest management. The study was conducted in Bolivia, Mexico, Kenya and Uganda. Although all four of these countries have decentralized their forestry sectors during the past 15 years, their relevant institutions differ in their design. Also, the conditions leading to the governance reforms in these four countries are diverse. Whereas the East African countries have a long history of protectionist objectives, the Latin American countries have a long history of community forestry enterprises and of the struggle for more inclusive forestry practice and equitable distribution of benefits from forestry enterprises. Data were collected using the methodology of the International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) research program. Participatory focus groups among community members were used to explore institutions and local perceptions of forest conditions and their demographics, while key informant interviews (with forestry officials for example) were used to obtain official perceptions of forest condition, the nature of conservation measures adopted by user groups. Key informant interviews with local authorities were also conducted to establish the number and nature of activities conducted by community based organizations, private organizations and other government organizations with mandates and/or activities that have implications for local forest management. Data were collected for 39 forests in Bolivia, Mexico, Kenya and Uganda, during two separate visits to each forest between 1993 and 2008. The analysis is conducted at two levels—the forest and the user group, this allows us to incorporate the perceptions of forestry authorities as well as that of user groups themselves with regard to forest condition. In total, 290 user groups were divided into three categories based on the proportion of women in each group. These categories were: male dominated (women comprising one-third or less of the group), mixed (women comprising between one-third and two-thirds of the group) and female dominated (women comprising two-thirds or more of the group). These three categories accounted for 40%, 37% and 23% of the 290 user groups, respectively. The research presented in this paper advances our knowledge of how women may influence forest management. The research adopts a comparative approach, which is intended to identify synergies within regions and to create a learning environment that may lead to improved forest management. The study investigates different gender composition group’s property rights to forest resources, harvesting preferences, participation in rule making, relative investments in forest management and the outcomes of these activities. Our empirical analysis offers three important findings. First, gender composition is important. Female-dominated groups tend to have more property rights to trees and bushes, and collect more fuel wood and less timber than do male-dominated or mixed groups. Mixed-gender groups participate more in forestry decision making and are more likely to exclude other groups from harvesting from the forest. Female-dominated groups invest less, sanction less and exclude less. The finding that female-dominated groups are less likely than other groups to participate in decision making or invest in forest improvements is not controversial. Time constraints, male bias in the delivery of extension services, and a lack of information can depress investments and participation. Moreover, a huge literature has shown that due to social and cultural norms that limit their roles to the private sphere, women often lack experience, confidence and skills to engage in the public sphere. Mixed groups on the other hand, perform consistently better in all forestry functions, including in exclusion. An earlier study has suggested that mixed groups exploit the complementary advantages of men and women and have better access to information and services from external agents. Second, the implementation of decentralization reforms strengthens user groups’ property rights to forest products and has reduced actual user groups’ actual harvest levels. Also, decentralization has encouraged user groups to participate in forest management activities, including participation in decision making and sanctioning. These gains sit well with the normative expectations of decentralization reforms. By expanding and/or strengthening property rights and management responsibilities, they were intended to create incentives for sustainable use and management. However, such incentives are even more effective when users have full rights to resource benefits as well. Third, there exists regional difference. User groups in the Latin America tend to invest more, than the ones in Africa. While the exact reasons driving this outcome is not immediately evident, we hypothesize that a longer history and experience of community involvement (the outcome of longstanding struggles in broad policy reforms) in forest management may have also influenced the magnitude of benefits accrued to community actors.


Introduction
Women's participation in decision making at the user-group level and in forest committees has been demonstrated to have a positive impact on forest sustainability.For example, women's participation enhances forest regeneration and reduces illegal harvesting through improved monitoring.Their presence in forest user groups increases the groups' capacity to manage and resolve conflicts, which in turn increases the likelihood that resource users will comply with and respect harvesting and use rules.These insights have been especially useful in informing policy and project interventions designed to strengthen and amplify women's participation.
The research presented in this brief advances our knowledge of how women may influence forest management.It explores the different effects on forest management by groups with different male-female composition (i.e.female-dominated, mixed-gender and male-dominated user groups).The study investigates each type of group's property rights to forest resources, harvesting preferences, participation in rule making, relative investments in forest management and the outcomes of these activities.The research, conducted in four countries in Latin America and East Africa, adopts a comparative approach, which is intended to identify synergies within regions and to create a learning environment that may lead to improved forest management.

The context
The study was conducted in Bolivia, Mexico, Kenya and Uganda.Although all four of these countries have decentralised their forestry sectors during the past 15 years, their relevant institutions differ in their design.Bolivia introduced forestry reforms in 1996 that transferred substantial power and resources to local governments, but retained national ownership of all forest resources.Mexico has decentralised some of its forest governance functions and ownership rights to communities, but has retained more political and financial control at the federal and state levels.Uganda, which has implemented forest decentralisation reforms since 1996, has devolved authority to the district level, with state-centred control of budgets and revenues.Kenya's 2005 reform was to devolve authority to community associations but with responsibility in nested hierarchies that overlap both governance/administrative levels and ecological scales.
The conditions leading to the governance reforms in these four countries are diverse.Mexico has a long history of community involvement in forest management, whereas Kenya has the longest history of state control over forest resources.Uganda has historically oscillated between state and local control of forest resources, and Bolivia exhibits the most progressive and most numerous formal institutions for community control.Whereas the East African countries have a long history of protectionist objectives, the Latin American countries have a long history of community forestry enterprises and of the struggle for more inclusive forestry practice and equitable distribution of benefits from forestry enterprises.

What we studied and what we found
The analysis in this brief is based on information, collected using participatory methods, encompassing: • institutions affecting resource use such as de jure and de facto property rights to forest resources, enforcement of rights and legal ownership of forests; • resource users' participation in rule making and enforcement (e.g.monitoring and sanctioning) and their exclusion of other groups from harvesting from 'their' forests; • user group efforts at forest management, for example, investments in forest improvements and other activities such as ensuring regeneration; • socio-economic and demographic status such as size, gender composition, wealth differentiation, population, forest dependence and land ownership; and • forestry officials' and users' perceptions of forest condition, i.e. vegetation diversity and density.
Data were collected for 39 forests in Bolivia, Mexico, Kenya and Uganda, during two separate visits to each forest between 1993 and 2008.In total, 290 user groups were divided into three categories based on the proportion of women in each group.

Gender, institutions and sustainability in the context of forest decentralisation reforms in Latin America and East Africa
Over the study period, forest condition, in terms of vegetation and species diversity, remained constant in about one-third of the forests, improved in another third and declined in the remaining third, as shown in Figures 1 and 2. However, as the figures illustrate, such changes were minor.Furthermore, most forests appear to have adopted more restrictive conservation measures to protect resources and increased restrictions on access rules (Figures 3 and 4).Of those These categories were: male dominated (women comprising onethird or less of the group), mixed (women comprising between one-third and two-thirds of the group) and female dominated (women comprising two-thirds or more of the group).These three categories accounted for 40%, 37% and 23% of the 290 user groups, respectively.
The following sections discuss the findings of the data analysis.See Table 1 for definitions of variables.Regional dummy, Latin America (base is Africa) dummy, 1=Latin America, 0=Africa 0.28 0 1 that have not, two-thirds restricted access for other user groups.This suggests that, over time, both more restrictive conservation measures and stricter access rules have been adopted in the forests.However, the gender composition of user groups appears to have little or no effect on vegetation density, species diversity or even on the nature of conservation measures.

Property rights to harvest and actual amounts harvested
Results of the data analysis (Table 2) confirm that the gender composition of user groups influences the right to harvest trees and bushes, but not the right to harvest soil and stones or wildlife, even after controlling for a wide range of user group and forest characteristics.Female-dominated groups are 33% more likely than male-dominated groups to have the right to harvest either trees or bushes.Female-dominated groups collect more fuelwood and less timber from the forest than do male-dominated groups.Decentralisation significantly reduces the actual amounts of fuelwood harvested.Decentralisation reforms have had a positive impact on user groups' likelihood of having property rights to harvest bushes and wildlife.
The results show that formal ownership of a resource (whether government, communal or private) does not necessarily preclude a property right to harvest.Users have rights to harvest resources regardless of ownership structures.This finding demonstrates that property rights of forests extend beyond 'ownership' to include other types of rights that do not necessarily involve formal ownership.It also demonstrates that full resource ownership is not the only or most relevant right in all resource settings nor is it the only property arrangement that creates incentives for sustainable use and management.
The impact of external actors varies.Community-based organisations (e.g.local entities, including not-for-profit and forprofit organisations) strengthen user groups' rights to harvest bushes but constrain rights to harvest timber; by contrast, government organisations in general (e.g.agricultural agencies) have no effect either on substantive rights or on harvesting levels.Forest-specific government organisations (e.g. a forestry agency of a national government), however, limit rights to woody forest products such as trees and bushes, whilst external private organisations weaken user groups' rights to trees and wildlife.
Decentralisation tends to significantly expand rights to bushes and wildlife and to shrink rights to fuelwood, even though we observe an increasing trend in such harvests over the years.Moreover, over time, user groups become less likely to have property rights to harvest trees, soil and stones and wildlife, which supports our earlier observation that access rules to forest products became more restrictive over time.Thus, although decentralisation strengthens the rights of users to some products, users appear to constrain themselves by adopting stricter access rules.
Although decentralisation expands user groups' rights to harvest, it reduces the amount user groups actually do harvest.Whereas granting free access to other users constricts a user group's right to harvest trees, it increases the actual amount of fuelwood collected from the forest.Over time, however, user groups' rights to harvest declined, even though the amounts they collected rose.

Investment activities and management
Where the government owns the forestland, there is a high likelihood of users undertaking regeneration activities (Table 3).By contrast, external enforcement by community-based organisations or other forest-specific organisations depresses the likelihood of regeneration investments.External private organisations increase the likelihood of regeneration activities.Furthermore, wealth differentiation within user groups is associated with the tendency to conduct resource improvements.
User groups in Latin America are more likely to adopt investment activities than are those in East Africa, as shown in Table 4.For example, user groups in Africa have a 9% probability of being involved in regeneration activities, compared with 65% for user groups in Latin America.This pattern applies across all three gender categories.For example, male-dominated groups in Latin America are 15 times more likely than those in Africa to invest in regeneration activity (6% in Africa versus 89% in Latin America), and twice as likely to invest in improvements (18% in Africa versus 47% in Latin America).Overall, mixed-gender groups invest more than other groups.
In terms of investment, regional differences are much more dominant than gender differences.Property rights and ownership structures differ quite markedly (i.e.community ownership in Latin America versus government ownership in East Africa) across the two regions and may influence incentives to invest.However, we find that legal ownership does not generally influence actual investments (except for regeneration investments).It is likely that the difference in investments between Latin America and East Africa is linked to the distribution of benefits derived from forest resources.As noted above, Latin American countries are continuing to experiment with timber management and extraction under community concessions, and it is likely that some revenues generated will be invested back into forest maintenance.By contrast, revenues from East African forests are rarely invested back into forest management; they mostly revert to the central government treasury (as in Kenya).Even when revenues are retained at the district level (as in Uganda), forests must compete with needs such as health care and education infrastructure, which are accorded a higher priority.
With regard to management, mixed-gender groups are more likely to participate in rule making than male-dominated ones; they are also more likely to exclude other groups (see Table 3).Femaledominated groups are less likely to participate in monitoring and sanctioning.Decentralisation reforms increased user groups' participation in forest rule making and in monitoring and sanctioning processes.This result is consistent with the intent of such reforms, which are aimed at actively engaging communities in management decision making and responsibility.
Wealth differentiation amongst users in groups has a positive impact on rule making and sanctioning, as does the number of  -0.06 (-2.27)  community-based organisations.Wealth disparities within user groups also promote exclusionary practices.This may support the line of thinking about collective action that suggests that privileged individuals within groups can underwrite the costs of collective action by disproportionately contributing their resources towards collective activities in anticipation of greater benefits.Alternatively, it may imply elite capture where wealthier, more influential individuals are more likely to participate in critical group functions in order to influence outcomes in their favour.
Note that community-based organisations promote user group participation in forest management, especially with regard to rule making.

Conclusions
At the forest level, the lack of association between gender composition of user groups and forest condition (or between stricter harvesting rules or conservation measures and forest condition) points to a need to include and account for other influencing factors (such as biophysical, socio-economic and institutional) in an analytically comprehensive manner, which this analysis did not attempt.
The user-group level analysis offers two important findings.First, gender composition is important.Female-dominated groups tend to have more property rights to trees and bushes, and collect more fuelwood and less timber than do male-dominated or mixed groups.Mixed-gender groups participate more in forestry decision making and are more likely to exclude other groups from harvesting from the forest.Female-dominated groups invest less, sanction less and exclude less.The finding that female-dominated groups specialise in certain forest products agrees with findings by other researchers, who have demonstrated that women tend to collect certain forest products in line with their gendered roles and responsibilities.The finding that female-dominated groups are less likely than other groups to participate in decision making or invest in forest improvements is not controversial.Time constraints, male bias in the delivery of extension services and a lack of information can depress women's investments and participation.Moreover, a huge literature has shown that, due to social and cultural norms that limit their roles to the private sphere, women often lack the experience, confidence and skills to engage in the public sphere.Mixed-gender groups, by contrast, perform consistently better in all forestry functions, including in exclusion.An earlier study has suggested that mixed groups exploit the complementary advantages of men and women and have better access to information and services from external agents.Although policy makers and practitioners are advised to seek interventions that strengthen women's groups by delivering information, technologies and capacity-building programmes in formats that take into account their constraints, they should also recognise, support and strengthen other types of groups, such as mixed-gender ones.However, before designing interventions for mixed-gender groups, it is important to gain better understanding of their structure and functioning, including the nature and extent of cooperation, leadership and the flows of information, knowledge and benefits between male and female members.
Second, the implementation of decentralisation reforms has strengthened user group rights to forest products yet has reduced user groups' actual harvest levels.Furthermore, decentralisation has encouraged user groups to participate in forest management activities, including decision making and sanctioning.These gains agree with the normative expectations of decentralisation reforms.By expanding and strengthening property rights and management responsibilities, the reforms were intended to create incentives for sustainable use and management.However, such incentives are even more effective when users also have full rights to resource benefits, including incomes.Third, regional differences exist.User groups in Latin America tend to invest more than those in Africa.Whilst the exact reasons for this are not immediately evident, we hypothesise that Latin America's longer history of and experience in community involvement (the outcome of longstanding struggles in broad policy reforms) in forest management may have influenced the distribution of benefits to community actors.

Figure
Figure 2. Species diversity during two visits

Table 2 . Empirical results for property rights and actual harvest a Category Variable description Property rights (probit) Harvested from forest (OLS)
a.All regressions are corrected for heteroscedasticity ; b.M.E. is mean error ; c. t Stat is Student t-test ; d. signifigance at 10% ; e. signifigance at 5% ; f. signifigance at 1%.August

Table 4 . User group investments by region (proportion of user groups that have undertaken certain investment or behaviour)
Note: Figures in bold are significantly higher than the average.