Can Women Save the Forests? Gender, Women’s Empowerment, and Conservation Negotiations in Neoliberal Chile, 1995-2015

Andrew Slemmon, University of Arizona

In recent decades, tensions surrounding conservation efforts of Chilean parks and forests often made the headlines in Chile –and beyond the borders of the Chilean nation-state. This was related to violent conflicts among non-indigenous landholders and Mapuche populations; to tensions about large-scale purchases of land by foreigners (a contested reality even if foreigners prioritized the protection of the environment); and to top-down neoliberal development plans that had conservationists up in arms. The negotiations over protected environments such as parks and forests have also revealed new gendered dimensions. We find references to gender equality “roadmaps” drawn by officials who seek to incorporate gender equality into protected areas’ governance and management, aimed at narrowing the gender gap in protected area management, for example. Can women, in fact, save the forests, as some public discourses suggest? Inspired by Joan Scott’s familiar assertion that gender is central to all relationships of power, this study explores gender as a category of analysis that structures human engagement with the environment.  We find evidence of this connection codified in institutional discourses and reproduced in the practices of individuals and organizations.  Even neoliberal developers, not usually prioritizing goals of equality, advocate for greater incorporation of women in capitalist structures in general, and in park-and forest management in particular. In this study, I explore the gendered elements of these initiatives that claim to recognize women as sustainers of biodiversity and imply the goal of avoiding land management that is detrimental to women. How can we best understand this approach in the contexts of women’s empowerment, and the protection of the environment?

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 171. Ethics of Care, Gender, Environment, and Labor