Towards gender equality in family forestry: building self-efficacy together with other female forest owners

Abstract

The share of women among forest owners is growing in the traditionally masculine family forest sector. The present study continues the research on women who own forest in the Nordic setting. The focus is on the behaviour and role of rural female forest owners in Finland, as well as on the benefits of peer learning when building self-efficacy as a forest owner. The qualitative data consist of interviews with female forest owners, peer-learning group observations and feedback. The studied female forest owners who participated in the peer-learning group focused on silvicultural actions on the home farm. These women were eager to learn, but uncertain about their experience and capabilities as forest owners, which reduced their confidence to participate in forest-related discussions outside the home farm. The responsibility and decision-making power regarding the forest property is, in many cases, given to the husband. Within the studied group, the desired aim of learning seems to be the same silvicultural and timber production-oriented knowledge as held by male forest owners. In order to create new ideas and even business opportunities, the facilitator of peer-learning group plays an important role in encouraging participants to take part in more diverse discussions.

Challenging the concept of active forest ownership: the perspective of women forest owners in Finland

“…Follo (2008) reported that, in Norway, women forest owners felt less confident and less knowledgeable in forestry than males. Similar results were also found in Finland (Hamunen et al 2020). In the US, Markowski-Lindsay et al (2020) found out that women forest owners felt less confident, less prepared and less financially capable related to topics of land use when comparing to men.…”

“…Furthermore, women forest owner networks have been formed in Sweden (Lidestav and Andersson 2011), which have been found to increase member involvement and confidence in forestry activities (Lidestav and Andersson 2011). Similar networks are found in Finland, Norway and the US (Brandth et al 2004;Redmore and Tynon 2010;Ma et al 2012;Huff 2017;Hamunen et al 2020). However, the results of the women-only activities are mixed.…”

“…However, the results of the women-only activities are mixed. The networks for women forest owners have created a comfortable place for discussions (Huff 2017), increased access to forestry-related information and education (Redmore and Tynon 2010) and supported learning (Hamunen et al 2020). Furthermore, women-only networks have been able to mobilise resources and increase the opportunities for women (Agarwal 2000;Brandth et al 2004) and build social capital and support social development (Agarwal 2000;Arora-Jonsson 2005).…”

Female forest owners as a market segment? Results from a marketing experiment in the context of a small forest service enterprise

“…Nevertheless, based on the analysis of our experiment, it can also be concluded that gender alone does not represent a successful market segmentation base among forest owners, even though female forest owners are often discussed as one forest owner group (e.g. Follo et al 2017, Hamunen et al 2020. From the marketing perspective, it is important not to treat them as a group of homogeneous consumers with similar values and objectives concerning their forest management.…”

Conservation perspectives of small-scale private forest owners in Europe: A systematic review

“…For example, being old, male, and rural-oriented had a weakening effect. Since the numbers of female (Hamunen et al 2020 ) as well as non-resident or urban forest owners are increasing (Nordlund and Westin 2011 ; Eggers et al 2014 ), there are growing opportunities to integrate nature conservation into forest management decisions. This changing ownership structure, however, is accompanied by an increase of forest owners with little knowledge and interest in forest management (Weiss et al 2019 ).…”