Women as Decision-Makers: Environmental Change

"When more women are involved in group decisions about land management, the group conserves more—particularly when offered financial incentives to do so…"

In an article published in Nature Climate Change, Krister Andersson, Nathan Cook, and Tara Grillos – all from the Center for the Governance of Natural Resources – demonstrate how involving more women in local decision-making improves the effectiveness of forest conservation efforts.  The research study took place in forest communities from Indonesia, Peru, and Tanzania, and involved increasing the proportion of women within local decision-making groups.  You can read the CU Boulder Today article here, or the full article is available from Nature Climate Change.  

"Interventions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions strive to promote gender balance so that men and women have equal rights to participate in, and benefit from, decision-making about such interventions. One conventional way to achieve gender balance is to introduce gender quotas… We show that gender quotas make interventions more effective and lead to more equal sharing of intervention benefits."