Gender, Development and Environmental Governance

A major challenge in studies of environmental governance is dealing with the diversity of the people involved at multiple levels ¿ villagers, development agents, policy-makers, private resource users and others ¿ and taking seriously their aspirations, conflicts and collaborations. This book examines this challenge in two very disparate parts of our world, exploring what gender-equality, resource management and development mean in real terms for its inhabitants as well as for our environmental futures.

Based on participatory research and in-depth fieldwork, Arora-Jonsson studies struggles for local forest management, the making of women¿s groups within them and how the women¿s groups became a threat to mainstream institutions. Insights from India, consistently ranked as one of the most gender-biased countries, are compared with similar situations in the ostensibly gender-equal Sweden. Arora-Jonsson also analyzes how dominant ideas about the environment, development and gender