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How do processes for community engagement in forestry decision making in Canada serve the aims of sustainable forest management? This paper reports on several studies of forest land-use and management planning processes in four provinces and a national survey of forest-sector advisory committees to determine who is selected to participate, what values participants bring to the table, and how participants are expected to behave in committee processes. The analysis suggests that participatory mechanisms are both shaped by and reinforce local norms, values and expectations of forestry communities. Thus, the focus is on understanding the social context within which communities become engaged rather than providing a technical assessment of specific initiatives. In particular, the study examines assumptions related to gender, class and racialized identities that operate in rural communities and shape the participation and influence of participants. These studies all suggest that forestry advisory committees remain elite organizations, dominated by individuals with economic stakes, constrained by priorities set by government and/or industry, and focused on technical issues. Women, Aboriginal people and those of lower socioeconomic status are less likely to participate and less likely to make substantive contributions when they do participate. Differences by gender are significant, but gender is not the only factor that explains the marginalization of some groups within these processes. The results suggest a need to examine how gender intersects with other sets of social relations such as class and racialized identity in order to better understand the social factors that will influence the achievement of sustainable forest management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a large literature that addresses the gendered structure of forestry occupations in Europe and the USA, relatively little attention has been paid to these issues in Canada. In this paper, it is argued that policy makers and academics have used outdated statistics about forestry employment to shape policies and programs of government and industry. Use of these data has been to the general disadvantage of women working in the forest industry and in forestry communities. This paper draws mainly on three studies, spanning the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s. Each study relied on secondary sources such as Census data, government and industry documents, as well as primary sources such as interviews or questionnaires. On Vancouver Island, British Columbia, analysis of land reallocation policies and transition strategies for displaced workers in the 1990s did not consider women as forestry workers or consider how job losses and opportunities for retraining might vary between men and women. Consequently, gender-neutral transition strategies were more accessible for men than for women. A study of female forestry workers in Saskatchewan revealed there was very little knowledge about employment conditions for women in forestry. Women reported that they missed out on training and advancement opportunities because they lacked networks, childcare support or other benefits that might encourage them to improve their circumstances. Finally, a survey of forest sector advisory committees across the country revealed a very low rate of participation by women, even though those who did participate had some significantly different viewpoints about forestry than their male counterparts. In combination, these efforts suggest that improvements in the understanding of forestry employment would benefit forestry workers, both male and female, and ensure that all workers made lasting contributions to the industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]