Analysing gender roles in community natural resource management - Negotiation, lifecourses and social inclusion

This article considers the absence of convincing analyses of gender roles i n thinking about community-based natural resource management, it suggests t hat policies and approaches are inadequately gendered and particularly omit to recognise the relational nature of gender. Such approaches are further criticised for promoting women's development to the neglect of men, for per petuating normative generalisations about men and women and for an excessiv e focus on public manifestations of gendered participation and decision mak ing. This results in policies which overlook the changing and negotiated na ture of gender roles, the intersection of productive and reproductive conce rns in gendered decisionmaking and the costs to women and men of inclusion in and exclusion from public life. This article draws on examples of gender ed decision-making and negotiation over the management of land, livestock a nd water in Zimbabwe. it argues for a more sophisticated conceptualisation of the roles of men and women which takes account of their capacities as in dividual agents as well as the different structural constraints operating o n them. The article suggests areas where further analysis is urgently requi red.