822 M. J. Goldman et al.
Women know a lot about the forest. After all, they go each and every day to the forest. If you call them for meetings, they will come and then you can ask them about what is happening in specific forests. But they are not called so much, they won’t know that they can come for the meetings.
Other women said they would suggest reinstating practices from before the area became a Wildlife Sanctuary, including planting tubers and fruit trees in the forest that animals could also eat, removing invasive Lantana species, and using fire to manage the forest. Women insisted the forest was their home, despite their inability to manage it since it had become a protected area. They spoke about being in- timately connected to the forest and dedicated to protecting it. As one group of women stated when asked if they were interested in conservation, ‘the idea of conservation is with- in all of us—men, women, all of us!Wecan’t live without the forest and we won’t.’ Many of the women we spoke with in India and Tanzania
were interested in participating in conservation and suggested that researchers andNGOs should callwomen-onlymeetings to make it easier for more women to participate, or give women the agenda in advance. In both places, women were meeting to form groups to address micro-finance and devel- opment issues, often assisted by state agencies or develop- ment NGOs. Although questions of wildlife conservation were rarely addressed at thesemeetings, some Soligawomen’s groups were beginning to talk about forest management is- sues and lamented they were not approached by outside or- ganizations working on forest rights or wildlife conservation. InTanzania,Maasaiwomen, aided by civic education on land rights, leadership and empowerment, used their community groups to initiate a grievance against what they saw as injus- tices associated with the new community conservation area, the Manyara Ranch (Goldman & Little, 2015). Formally, over the last 2 decades we have observed that
Maasai women’s participation in community-based conser- vation activities in the study villages usually took two forms: one or two women (often selected by men) on a committee, and income-generating projects specifically for women in- itiated by a conservation NGO or tourism agency, such as selling beadwork or dancing for tourists. Yet at the same time, women have been actively participating in NGO- lead development and education activities where they have gained leadership skills, literacy and knowledge about their rights to land titles. Additionally, new legal structures in Tanzania prescribe a quota of women at village meetings and on land committees, leading to an increased involve- ment of women in land issues. These combined forces gave women in the study villages strength to address their concerns related to the Manyara Ranch. The Manyara Ranch has a contentious political history,
with the two study villages claiming original ownership rights. When it was first created as a conservation area in 2002, there were no women on the board charged with running the Ranch, and only two women (who never
spoke at meetings) on an eight-member steering committee representing the two villages. In 2013, after learning about their rights to land titles froma localMaasai-led development organization, women in one village led a movement to re- quest the title for the Ranch be returned to the two villages. They met on their own and organized village-wide meetings to draft a letter to the Member of Parliament (also the chair- man of the board), requesting the title be returned. They also demanded rights to graze during the dry season, care for wildlife themselves, have a tourism venture on village land, and produce an environmental management plan. In 2016 the title of Manyara Ranch was revoked from the conservation agency and turned over to the district govern- ment. The two villages remain beneficiaries, but with more power than they had under the previous title. In 2018, two women were placed both on the board and on the steering committee. That same year, when a group of 23 Maasai women were asked how the Ranch should be run and by whom, they said the process should involve women and men. They further explained that ‘we women have to par- ticipate in every single activity to make sure that women’s ideas will not be ignored. Any board or committee that will be formed, women should be given seats.’ They said that women could participate in meetings, to propose ideas and offer opinions. An elderly woman noted that this was different from the past: ‘in the past, we didn’t par- ticipate, nor werewe given a chance to be nominated to lead the community, because women were very much scorned.’ A group of six women stated that today they have a chance to be selected for leadership positions and to present their ideas at meetings. They were hopeful these changes would lead to real opportunities for employment, particularly for the growing number of educated young women in both villages, participation in resource management, and for truthful information regarding ranch management to reach community members. Yet, there are only two women on the steering committee, and most outside conservation agencies working in the villages continue to hire men as wildlife guides and game scouts. In doing so, the valuable knowledge and experience that women have regarding wildlife goes unnoticed. We present some of that knowl- edge below, mostly in the form of stories.
Knowing wildlife through stories and experience
Prior work in Tanzania and Kenya showed that Maasai women shared stories about lions protecting women and children; stories that usually end with an offering of a slaughtered animal to the lion, and letting it go in peace, as covered in Goldman et al. (2010):
There was a woman who travelled to a temporary boma [homestead] with a child on her back. On the way a lion walked ahead and then behind her, as if he was trying to stop her. She was tired. She placed her child on the ground, thinking this would appease the lion, and
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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