Introduction

There is a growing debate about gender and the environment which highlights women's roles in the use and management of natural resources (Braidotti et al. 1994). This debate has stimulated much development analysis and created greater awareness of the activities of women farmers. But there are dangers in conceiving of women's roles in relation to the environment in a partial, narrow, or static way. Seeing women as isolated environmental actors, separate from men, with an innate understanding of Nature can be very misleading. Current development policy initiatives are often based on this essentialist assumption that women's relationship with the environment is special and, therefore, women are particularly interested in and capable of protection of the environment. Such a view enables policy makers to argue that projects aimed at sustaining the environment will also benefit women, and vice versa. This synergistic approach can be seen as creating both a trap and an opportunity.

At the level of rhetoric and debate, it is widely understood that women, in their productive and reproductive roles, have close links with the environment in many countries and that they are often among the first to be affected by resource degradation. However, policy makers do not always appreciate the diversity and complexity of the relationship between women and the environment, resulting in unexpected failures in development projects. For example, a tree-planting project in Ethiopia, using women as labour, was seen by the funding agency as both improving the environment by reducing soil erosion and also assisting women by providing employment and additional firewood. Local women, on the other hand, saw the tree planting as increasing their burden of work without improving their lives because men controlled the land and the trees (Berhe 1994). Thus an understanding of both property rights and the complexity of gender divisions of labour is vital to an appreciation of the link between women and the environment.