WOMEN’S POLITICAL EMPOWERMENT AND SUSTAINABLE FORESTRY A cross-country analysis

Abstract: Extensive research argues that women express higher levels of concern regarding environmental degradation and are more likely to act for environmental causes. This raises the question if women’s empowerment could lead to better environmental outcomes. Some research finds that women’s political empowerment indeed has good environmental outcomes. I argue that sustainable forestry could be an important dependent variable because deforestation is found to differently impact men and women, for example through the gendered division of labor and differentiated access to resources. Therefore, the thesis investigates the relationship between women’s civil liberties, civil society participation and elite political participation and sustainable forestry. This is done with a cross-country statistical analysis using a 101 country- sample. It is found that the variable measuring women’s civil society participation has a weak positive correlation with the variable measuring sustainable forestry and, contrary to expectations, the other measures of women’s political empowerment under controls are negative corelates. All results are statistically insignificant so no strong conclusions can be drawn.