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| Volume 105(1) 2005, pages: 67-76. | | Quentin Gausset, Emma Lucie Yago-Ouattara & Bassirou Belem: | Gender and trees in Péni, South-Western Burkina Faso. Women’s needs, strategies and challenges | | This article describes and explains the different interests and strategies
that men and women have in tree management in Péni, southwestern
Burkina Faso. It argues that men and women have different
household responsibilities. While the responsibility of the men is to
procure staple food, housing, clothes, medicines and administration
fees, women are responsible for finding the ingredients of the sauce
accompanying meals and to take care of the children and the daily
domestic tasks. As a result, the women’s interest in trees focuses on
their use-value for the household, while men have a stronger interest
in their commercial value. Consequently, women tend to rely
heavily on the existence of communally owned resources that can be
gathered by everyone, while men prefer “privatised” resources. The
social marginalisation of women makes it more difficult for them to
manage tree resources according to their own needs. Women are not
completely powerless, as they have developed successful strategies
to bypass some of the existing social and tenure constraints and defend
their interests. However, new regional and global trends have
put women’s resources and strategies under pressure. | | >> download as pdf |
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