Women's stories and knowledge of wildlife and conservation practice in northern Tanzania and South India


MARA J. GOLDMAN,S HRUTHI N. JAGADEESH TUBULU MENG’ORU NGIMO J I N O and LAKSHMI M. GOWD A


Abstract Around the world, Indigenous peoples have stor- ies about wildlife that reflect knowledge and feelings about animals and their relationship to humans. Different people’s experiences speak to the variety of interactions people have with animals in the spaces where humans and non-human animals live and interact. These stories are often told by women, reflecting the ways in which gender mediates hu- man–environment relations. Yet gendered differences in knowledge and experience are rarely addressed in wildlife conservation research and action. Even community-based conservation efforts often ignore or marginalize the knowl- edge and experiences of women. We present women’s stor- ies and experiences of wildlife from Maasai communities in Tanzania and Soliga communities in India. We show that women have the desire and knowledge to participate in conservation decision-making but are currently marginalized from community conservation practice. We argue that in- cluding women in research and action is key for successful community-based wildlife conservation.


Keywords Gender, India, Maasai, Soliga, stories, Tanzania, wildlife conservation, women


Introduction


management and conservation practice (Gadgil et al., 1993; Western et al., 1994; Andrade & Rhodes, 2012; Kothari et al., 2013; Oldekop et al., 2016). Yet, community conservation approaches have been widely criticized for uneven distribution of benefits (Thompson & Homewood, 2002), superficial participation and limited inclusion of local knowledge (Agrawal & Ribot, 1999; Goldman, 2011).


S MARA J. GOLDMAN (Corresponding author, orcid.org/0000-0001-9864-256X)


and SHRUTHI N. JAGADEESH Department of Geography, University of Colorado Boulder, 260 UCB Boulder, Colorado 80309-0260, USA E-mail mara.goldman@colorado.edu.org


TUBULU MENG’ORU NGIMOJINO Oltukai, Tanzania


LAKSHMI M.GOWDA Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Bangalore, India


Received 8 July 2020. Revision requested 13 October 2020. Accepted 12 March 2021. First published online 22 September 2021.


cholars have argued that community involvement can lead to more efficient and socially just environmental


Communities are often homogenized and romanticized as undifferentiated actors, ignoring differences in gender, class, ethnicity, caste and livelihood, which reinforces existing inequalities (Agrawal & Gibson, 2001). Wildlife conserva- tion in particular, with its heavy focus on large mammals and anti-poaching patrols, promotes male hierarchies of knowledge and power, with women often excluded or mar- ginalized from projects (Hunter et al., 1990; Doubleday, 2020). We argue that community conservation needs to include a deeper appreciation of different ways of knowing and relating to wildlife within and across communities, particularly along gendered lines. We promote the value of storytelling practices within communities to uncover the various relations with wildlife that have thus far been mostly overlooked. The relationship between gender and the environment


has been well established in both research and policy. Gender was acknowledged as a key factor in Principle 20 of the 1992 Rio Declaration, which states ‘women have a vital role in environmental management’ and that their ‘full participation is therefore essential to achieve sustain- able development’ (cited in Ogra, 2012,p. 408). Gender mainstreaming was adopted by many development organi- zations to address the needs of women along with those of men at every stage of project development (Dawson, 2005; Mukhopadhyay, 2016). Scholars have noted that environ- ment–society relations are mediated through gender and other categories of social difference as tied to labour, rights, responsibilities, knowledge and social–spiritual relations (Agarwal, 1992), particularly in feminist political ecology (Rocheleau et al., 1996; Elmhirst & Resurreccion, 2008; Nightingale, 2017). Some have criticized gender main- streaming for its unequal application in practice, and repro- duction of binary gender categories (Asher & Varley, 2018; Elias et al., 2020). Unfortunately, many wildlife conserva- tion organizations have not taken up either gender main- streaming or scholarly critiques, seeing gender as outside the specific goals of wildlife conservation (Ogra, 2012). Yet research has shown that wildlife conservation prac-


tice is gendered, with the costs and benefits from conser- vation projects and human–wildlife conflicts unequally distributed across gender lines (Ogra, 2008; DeMotts & Hoon, 2012; Pascual et al., 2014).Women are often excluded as knowledgeable agents in community wildlife projects (Hunter et al., 1990), which can lead to both physical and


This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Oryx, 2021, 55(6), 818–826 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605321000363


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