When a woman is a man inter- and infra-gender differences in tree tenure and planting in Rwanda

摘要

Agroforestry depends on people's rights to plant and kuse trees-rights that in turn depend on the prevailing systems of land and tree tenure (Fortmann 1985). In Rwanda, as in many African societies, the rights to plant, own, manage and use trees are different for males and females. Until 1970, studies of rural livelihood systems all but completely ignored the woman's role in farming activities Studies done in the past 25 years do address women, but they tend to focus on women in general or on women who are heads of households. There are few, if any, studies that compare the agroforestry practices of married women with those of women heads of household Implicit in most of the literature are the assumptions that only men practise agroforestry and thatwhatever applied to men would apply equally to women (Fortmann and Bruce 1988). The resulting gap in the literature is what led to this research in Rwanda in 1992, to compare tree tenure and tree planting practices between men and women and also between married women and women heads of households.