Women's Leadership, Agency and Voice: Promoting Gender Justice within Community-Based Tenure Systems in Bolivia and Zambia: Synthesis Report
Tenure security has become a major focus of donors, policy-makers, and the media in the past ten ... more Tenure security has become a major focus of donors, policy-makers, and the media in the past ten years, as land and forest resources are under a series of socio-economic and environmental pressures and related demands (i.e., food security, fuel, carbon mitigation, and wildlife and biodiversity conservation). How women gain access to and maintain control over land and forest resources in this dynamic environment depends both on existing institutional frameworks and on efforts to promote gender justice within customary tenure systems. This report synthesizes research findings on gender dynamics and the implications for gender justice in community-based tenure systems in two Bolivian TCOs (Tierra Comunitaria de Origen/Native Community Land) and in Zambia’s Eastern Province. It highlights how women’s leadership and mobilization for access to resources differ, how access is conditioned by different levels of power and authority (family, community and state) as well as relationships with other local, regional and national actors. The report seeks to address the following questions: 1) In landscapes where statutory and customary tenure arrangements overlap, how do women maintain access to and control over land and forest resources? 2) In such landscapes, how do women participate in local and national land and forest resource governance, and what factors enable and constrain participation? 3) How do men and women engage in bargaining across differences of gender, household status, generation and ethnicity in order to establish access and participation? 4) To what extent is there a history of collective feminist and national level networking and organizing in Bolivia and Zambia around women’s land rights? 5) What factors enhance or otherwise limit women’s collective organizing around land rights and natural resources?
Journal of Outdoor Recreation, Education, and Leadership
Mushing exists in several forms: short and long-distance races, adventure tourism, recreation, an... more Mushing exists in several forms: short and long-distance races, adventure tourism, recreation, and sport. While some scholars assert that gender does not influence a musher’s experience, this research, based on interviews with mushers, broadens understanding of how gender influences mushing and a musher’s sense of self. Nearly all research participants initially stated that gender is irrelevant in mushing; for example, in competitions, people of all genders compete directly against one another. As interviews unfolded, participants spoke about how gender norms and stereotypes complicated their experiences and how non-mushers perceive them. Despite depictions of mushing as masculine, participants stated that mushing embodies both masculine and feminine traits and is empowering for all genders. We suggest that scholars in outdoor recreation continue to broaden their research agendas to acknowledge the complexity of gender identities and the empowering nature of the outdoors, particular...
L'hébergement chez une famille locale est en passe de devenir un type d'abri reconnu pour les fam... more L'hébergement chez une famille locale est en passe de devenir un type d'abri reconnu pour les familles déplacées. Comprendre l'expérience de l'hébergement pour les personnes déplacées et leurs hôtes peut aider les pays et les agences humanitaires à concevoir des activités relatives aux programmes favorisant le succès et la durabilité de cette solution.
This article examines activities undertaken by civil society organisations in Zambia to create ge... more This article examines activities undertaken by civil society organisations in Zambia to create gender-transformative change in customary tenure systems. It is based on primary data collected through interviews and group discussions with NGO representatives, lawyers and women's rights advocates, chiefs, women leaders, and local community members. The findings show that organisations pursue change by leveraging global and national frameworks and discourses and working with traditional authorities, local magistrates, men and women at the village level. Promoting gender transformative change requires multi-level networking and working across hierarchies of power that extend from the household to the state.
Increased attention to the role of forests in mitigating climate change through Reducing Emission... more Increased attention to the role of forests in mitigating climate change through Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) underscores the importance of taking local forest access and user rights into account to protect forest-based livelihoods. This paper uses baseline data from a USAID-funded impact evaluation of a REDD+ program in Zambia to examine the multiple interests and institutional actors that converge on forests and explore how they intersect to shape forest access and tenure security. We analyze how forest users in this site on the cusp of REDD+ program implementation view local governance and navigate the institutions that shape current forest access and management, finding low rates of forest user participation in local forest governance and a weak accountability system. REDD+ safeguards potentially present both an opportunity and a mechanism to improve forest governance, but only if embedded into REDD+ processes and accompanied by structural change.
The subject of return: land and livelihood struggles for place and citizenship
Contemporary South Asia, 2015
With the end of Sri Lanka's war in 2009 and even before, as the Sri Lankan Armed Forces captu... more With the end of Sri Lanka's war in 2009 and even before, as the Sri Lankan Armed Forces captured and cleared Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam-controlled areas in the country's North and East, displaced families returned ‘home’ to rebuild their lives and livelihoods. However, the substantive reality of return shows that displacement does not end upon returning ‘home’. I demonstrate how the physical inability to access houses, land and resources renders return incomplete, how that ‘incompleteness’ is a constitutive part of how the returned create place and a sense of belonging, and negotiate their sense of self as Sri Lankan citizens. The subject of return is political; it is process and personhood. Through an examination of the subject of return and the claims and losses of the returned in the North and East, I show how displacement raises the question of the politics of return, the politics of which a postwar process of reconciliation must grapple with.
Rescuing Girls, Investing in Girls: A Critique of Development Fantasies
Journal of International Development, 2015
The girl child increasingly is at the centre of development programming. We draw on Slavoj Žižek’... more The girl child increasingly is at the centre of development programming. We draw on Slavoj Žižek’s notion of fantasy to show how and, more importantly, why girl-centred initiatives reproduce the shortcomings of women and gender-focused programmes before them. Through an analysis of three girl-centred campaigns, we illustrate how experts identify and diagnose girls’ problems and prescribe solutions that not only circumscribe girls’ futures, but are also counterproductive. We argue that even as campaigns try to integrate lessons learned from earlier gender and development initiatives, the critical reflection that a Žižekian approach promotes would better enable development actors to reformulate campaigns and fundamental campaign assumptions.
Reliance on nontimber forest products from homegardens and forests in a Sri Lankan village is pre... more Reliance on nontimber forest products from homegardens and forests in a Sri Lankan village is presented. Land and tree tenure in this village adjacent to the Sinharaja Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Reserve have shifted dramatically because of changing priorities in forest management recently shifting from ~ utilization toward complete forest protection. Local residents must adapt to a new set of social circumstances. Household demographics, access to land, and income from nontimber forest products (NTFPs) and external employment are examined as pertinent to household food acquisition. Linear correlations show significant associations between income generated from the sale of agricultural produce and nontimber forest products and the amount of money allocated to food purchases. Fifty-five edible plant species were found in homegardens. Four forest tree species provide food regularly. Case studies are essential in increasing the natural resource manager's awareness about the role of agroforestry in protected areas management and his or her understnading of promoting protection without compromising subsistence needs.
Land governance and gender: the tenure-gender nexus in land management and land policy, 2021
This chapter finds that women bargain with men in different ways for land access and that women s... more This chapter finds that women bargain with men in different ways for land access and that women see lack of access as an individual rather than a collective problem. Recent donor interventions that seek to improve women's land tenure security focus on women as private, rights-holding individuals within the household. While there is evidence that individual women do benefit from such schemes, donors also might focus on investments in grassroots and women's organizations and networks and leadership development so that women might be more willing to help one another thereby expanding the space for women's collective action.
Journal of International Humanitarian Action, 2019
Hosting or local families taking in displaced families is an important way to shelter persons dis... more Hosting or local families taking in displaced families is an important way to shelter persons displaced during war or by natural disaster. While field-level evidence of hosting is on the rise, academic and policy-related scholarship on hosting is scant. Based on an extensive literature review and supplemented by the author's own work experience in the humanitarian sector, this paper identifies and summarizes ten aspects that shape the hosting environment and its associated support programs. These aspects provide insight to humanitarian actors that support hosting situations rather than allowing them to play out on their own. These aspects potentially serve (1) as programmatic criteria that humanitarian actors and aid agencies should consider when designing and supporting hosting programs and (2) are substantively rich areas that would expand the research agenda on displacement and humanitarian response and assistance. This paper has implications for both humanitarian practice and research, including how members of the humanitarian community conceptual hosting as a social relationship.
A local family hosting a displaced family in their home is becoming a well-recognised form of she... more A local family hosting a displaced family in their home is becoming a well-recognised form of shelter for families in displacement. Understanding how displaced persons and their hosts experience hosting can help governments and humanitarian agencies design programme activities to promote its success and sustainability.
The report describes the approach and results of community wealth ranking (CWR) exercises conduct... more The report describes the approach and results of community wealth ranking (CWR) exercises conducted in 2015-2016 to ascertain the wealth groups and their characteristics of selected banana-producing communities in two regions of Uganda and four of Tanzania. The CWR information gathered was aimed at informing current and future banana breeding initiatives in and beyond the study areas. Participatory community wealth ranking exercises were conducted through focus group discussions (FGDs) within six selected districts. Based on their perception of others in their community, the farmers were asked to characterize their community’s wealth groups by assets, household and socio-economic characteristics, demographic characteristics, agricultural production practices, access to markets and access to agricultural extension services. They described each group according to similarities in characteristics and their proximity to the community’s perceived poverty line. These CWR exercises provide ...
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Papers by Cynthia Caron