Barriers and challenges to women participation in conservation of protected areas :

Abstract

Since time immemorial, women have always had a special relationship with the environment, being that they interact with it often in different aspects like collecting firewood, fetching water among others in their primary capacity as caretakers of their families. This therefore makes it impossible to design progressive policies for conservation without considering the needs and views of the women as well as actively involving them in the conservation activities (AWF, 2020), yet this is often the case in most of our communities in Uganda and even globally. This study was conducted in BINP and the community around it in Buhoma and Nkwenda parishes in Kayonza Sub County and Mpungu parish in Mpungu Sub County, Kanungu District so as to gather information on the barriers and challenges to women participation in conservation. This was aimed to gather information on the issues that hinder women participation, the challenges that the women who have bravely ventured into conservation face and how these can be addressed. This was done by finding out the conservation activities that women currently participate in, the issues that hinder them from participating in certain conservation activities, the challenges they face while taking part in conservation as well as the bodies and organizations involved in increasing women participation in conservation and how this is being achieved. Data was collected using three methods, that is, questionnaire, interviewing, and observation. Simple random sampling method was used to come up with a sample size of 6o respondents. Data was collected, entered and analyzed using SPSS 20 and results were presented by use of frequency tables, bar graphs and pie-charts. The study revealed that women mostly participate in implementation of conservation activities but are less involved in planning and monitoring these activities yet these are the aspects in which decisions are made. This thus brought to light the fact that the views of women mostly remain unacknowledged since they are left out of these crucial aspects of conservation. The study also revealed that due to their role as primary caretakers, women often have limited time to engage in conservation activities. The study further revealed that not all hope is lost as there’s potential for increasing women participation in conservation majorly through educating the women. The study recommended that a lot more effort be put in sensitization of the entire communities and not just the women on the benefits of recognizing the intrinsic relationship between women and the environment and acknowledging it when designing conservation policies and activities for protected areas like BINP.