This is the second gender conference held in Umeå. The first took place in 2006. The initiative was taken by professor Gun Lidestav at the faculty of Forest Science, SLU, Umeå, Sweden. The objective for the first conference was to raise awareness of the present gender structures in forest ownership and forest organisations, and reveal the impact of gender on the perception of forest and forestry in Europe, CIS and North America. ,
,The present conference is about how to do it, and what means that are necessary to make a difference.
,The headline ”Making a difference in theory and practice” gave a hint to the topics discussed during the conference, which all ended upp to the question How to make a difference. Some of the means for achieving a difference might be:,,
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,One lesson that Director General Arni Hole, Ministry of Children and Equality tried to teach was -You will not succeed unless you address gender stereotypes,among both genders. Or collectively shared stereotypes and,images of genders, called “culture and tradition”.,
, Some examples
,Example I
, from the Himalayas, which was introduced by Professor Prakash Tiwari, Department of Geography Kumaon University, India,, was the potential role of education in capacity building of rural women in participatory forest & natural resource management. The project is part of study carried out under research project on Natural Resource Management in Kosi Headwater funded by Department of Science & Technology (DST) Government of India (GOI) and implemented during 1998 – 2008. The results inicate that a higher level of education and literacy has some effcts on womens participation in social and economic descision making. The more educated women also seems to have a higher participation in village institutions and higher rate of self enmployment.,
,Example II
,Vera Lavadinovic PhD, Institute of Forestry Belgrade, Serbia told the audience about the situation in Serbia. Gender is an especially important area of concern . In patriarchal Balkan societies , women`s role were housewife duty. In modern time it is change but patriachal and Balkan chain still keep women in rural area out of modern life. The wars during the 1990.ies on Balcan causing tragedies and collapsed economy has especially had a very negative impact om wome´ns situation.
,One woman in a village summed up the problems of rural women by explaining that women have many obligations and few rights. The government has not made any efforts to educate rural women.
,There are a number of NGOs operating in rural areas; some have conducted trainings to inform women of their rights.,in forestry only about 15-20 % of the employees are female.,
,Women are in a majority among graduates from universities. In 2001, women comprised almost 56% of the total number of students who graduated. The percentage of graduated women from the faculty of forestry was as follows
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,Among those who wrote a doctoral thesis for the last ten years about 35 % have been women.
,Vera Lavadinovic rounded upp her presentation by telling the audience that the main reasons for her participance at the conference was to present status of women in Serbia, try to make new contact for future cooperation, find new ideas for a new project and try to find someone who would be interested to work on the new project in Serbia.,
,The conference will end thursday 18 june with a field trip in the surroundings of Umeå. After that all participants will go home, hopefully filled with new energy and linked to new networks,
,,Ivar Palo
, Forest Sweden,,,,,,,