Participation of maya women in forest use and biocultural heritage.

Abstract

The tendency to include the gender perspective in the management of natural resources is increasing globally. Thus, contributing studies that account for the ways in which women appropriate and reproduce productive practices is important, particularly in rural environments where challenges persist in sociocultural and economic matters. The study’s objective was to identify how opportunities are created for the access and participation of women around the diversification of productive forestry activities, to contribute to the conservation of the biocultural heritage based on their knowledge and their needs. Such an incursion develops in the midst of transformations in the commercial exploitation of tropical forests and the social reproduction of their biocultural heritage. The information was gathered by using anthropological techniques (ethnography, in-depth interviews, and a workshop on Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats), which allowed characterizing the role of women in productive forestry activities and their biased intervention in decision making in this regard, which extends to other dimensions of family and community life. It was found that the coexistence between commercial forest use and the prevalent traditional use places women in the low-impact use of natural resources such as the dominant scale of the extraction practices of non-timber products and those related to household care. Although some of them have participation in the timber-yielding commercial activity, their work is still not recognized.