Gender

Women’s Forest Congress Resolutions, And More Storytelling on TSW

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A big shout-out to the folks who worked on developing the Women’s Forest Congress held in October of this year.  I’d appreciate if anyone was there and would like to report on their experiences.

The enthusiasm and energy sounds amazing.. and yet, part of me wonders why we still need to do this 50 years after women entered our professions.  According to their website:

Forests play an intrinsic role in our lives. Forest products touch us at all stages of life and are increasingly emphasized as a central tenet of a responsible, sustainable future. Forestry is essential to us all, and yet the sector has less than 20% participation by women, and even less by people of color. Whether involved through land ownership, industry, conservation, public agency, or other roles, women in the forest sector are consistently and significantly underrepresented. This discrepancy is even more significant for women of color.

Of course, it’s not just us. Take climate science,

These inequities and specific obstacles women face help explain why there are only 122 women on Reuters Hot List of the world’s 1000 top climate scientists. Among the top 100 scientific papers in the last five years, less than half were authored by women, with only 12 papers having female lead authors.

Anyway, here are their resolutions:

The Women’s Forest Congress challenges organizations in the forest and forest products sector to

  1. FOSTER workforce opportunities for all women through mentorship programs, professional development, scholarships,, with a particular focus on reaching out to those who need help or are asking for assistance in any part of their journey;
  2. BROADEN recruiting practices to include wider networks, and build a pipeline of talent by connecting with and showcasing forests and the forest and forest products sector to youth and students, creating job shadowing and internship opportunities, etc.;
  3. BUILD workplace systems that support mental health coverage, and include training and programs promoting healthy lifestyles, such as family leave, flexible work schedules, generous vacation plans, social opportunities, and holistic wellness programs;
  4. PROMOTE a variety of working environments, encourage flexibility, and ensure all work environments are fully accessible;
  5. ENABLE employees to prioritize mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health and model healthy behaviors for others;
  6. CREATE a safe, inviting, and welcoming workspace for all resulting in greater wellness, increased retention, higher productivity, improved creativity, and heart-centered decision-making;
  7. ASSESS compensation for women and promote paths to pay equity at all levels, including discrepancies in intersectional identities, communities, and demographics;
  8. INTENTIONALLY IDENTIFY and support more women and those from underrepresented groups to achieve leadership positions;
  9. INCREASE the use of storytelling in conferences, trainings, and workshops; and
  10. APPLY models and frameworks to generate and realize solutions to the greatest forest challenges that are built on women’s strengths, such as inclusive, collaborative, and multi-scale holistic thinking.

TSW tries to do many of these things within our community, (but no one gets paid, so there’s that)  but one thing that struck me was “increase the use of storytelling.”   Many of us, both contributors and commenters tell stories as a matter of course in our posts and comments, and so I’m further encouraging that.  Also starting tomorrow I’ll post some stand-alone stories and we’ll see where that goes.  If you have a story, please consider sending it in.

International Women’s Day: Women’s Work – Collaboration and Peace-Seeking?

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From Boise State Public Radio’s new series https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/podcast/womens-work

When I was working for the Forest Service as the Region 2 Planning Director, one of my favorite parts of the job was reviewing the Regional Forester’s Honor Awards. Awardees, both internal and external, came from all over the Region; the entertainment was superb (Dave Steinke videos) and a good time was had by all. It reminded me of Mr. Fezziwig’s ball from The Christmas Carol.

If we read many media reports, they focus on the problems and not the successes. Each one of the awardees deserved their own news coverage, and maybe some of the local papers did cover them. The larger media… not so much. Anyway, I remember a particular time awardees with The Nature Conservancy, something to do with the BFF and/or prairie dogs and ranchers I think in South Dakota, came to our morning meeting. It struck me what one of the folks (a woman) said, “we’re not enemies, we all want to do the right thing.”

I wondered at the time whether there was something about our biology, family experiences, or the broader culture (or the interaction of those factors), that makes women more likely to engage in peace-seeking and relationship-building, and being able to see potential middle ground.  Possibly struggling within your own group/discipline for recognition might make you feel less more inclined to question and less inclined to toe the group/discipline line. Or if we’re not likely to ever make it to the decision-making level, we have less to lose by being outliers.  I think of free thinkers like Tisha Schuller and Patty Limerick here in Colorado, and Susan Jane Brown in Oregon.  Or Judith Curry, or Bari Weiss in the broader world.  But perhaps those are older women’s experiences of non-inclusion and those have changed drastically in the past 20 years.  Sadly, it does not appear so in the science biz. Example, this 2019 issue of Lancet.

That is certainly not to say that all women are one way and all men are another, like anything else, there’s a broad range within each group. Still, there is a broad range of literature in a variety of fields from the biological to the anthropological to foreign policy studies, that does describe differences. For example, from the Council on Foreign Relations:

A growing body of research suggests that standard peace and security processes routinely overlook a critical strategy that could reduce conflict and advance stability: the inclusion of women. Evidence indicates that women’s participation in conflict prevention and resolution advances security interests. One study found that substantial inclusion of women and civil society groups in a peace negotiation makes the resulting agreement 64 percent less likely to fail and, according to another study, 35 percent more likely to last at least fifteen years. Several analyses suggest also that higher levels of gender equality are associated with a lower propensity for conflict, both between and within states. Despite growing international recognition of women’s role in security, their representation in peace and security processes has lagged.

My observation is that women in our neck of the environmental conflict woods are well represented in the partnership and collaboration world. Perhaps as the stakes get higher, less so, although that would be interesting for researchers to examine further.  Does anyone know of researchers looking into this?  This Harvard study is also interesting and possibly worthy of discussion- it’s about males potentially having more post-conflict affiliation. How or does that play out in our world?

And of course we’ve previously posted on gender as related to litigation:
Litigation and Mediation: Exploring the Gendering of Touchy-Feely Options

In 2013, Laura van Riper published this article in Rangelands. There’s a pdf available that I think you can access here. If not, let me know.

On the Ground
• In recent years women have become more visible as leaders of collaborative range management in the western United States. Drawing on the experiences of four such women, gender aspects of leadership and community activism are explored.

• The four women leaders consider their efforts as “nothing special” and “business as usual”; gender considerations are not prominent in how they view their success.

• Personality traits are important determinants of exceptional leadership. Although such traits are found in both men and women, there may be cases where the more feminine attributes that emphasize peacemaking, community welfare, networking, and consensus building facilitate the management of complex problems.

• Collaborative leadership is vital for rangeland management. Recruiting and training such leaders should focus on identifying those with appropriate personality traits and aptitudes—regardless of gender—and providing them with the tools, skills, and support networks for success. The four successful women ranchers described here give us tangible models to replicate.

Thoughts? Experiences?

Litigation and Mediation: Exploring the Gendering of Touchy-Feely Options

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I ran across an interesting paper here on the gendered aspect of mediation compared to litigation. I think that it gets at some of the vibes I received when I was working for the Forest Service in litigation. I also think it’s germane to the Forest Service in that cooperators would like it if FS individuals had better “people skills.” In some cases, in the past at least, working and leading NEPA efforts have not been as highly valued by the FS as other kinds of work. Could some degree of gendering be one reason? I think it’s worthy of discussion. Of course, it is not about that men can’t be as good as women at any of these things.. it’s just that there might be underlying and unconscious thoughts that might make a person think “hey, she’s good at leading people on NEPA efforts, but that doesn’t translate to becoming a line officer because…” Or if NEPA and collaboration are unconsciously less valued, then men who do those jobs are also undervalued.

The authors make it easy to read this piece even if you don’t keep up with the field of gender studies. The lead author, Dr. Jennifer Schultz, is a law school professor at University of Manitoba and the second author Jocelyn Turnbull, is a lawyer in private practice.

Jennifer Coates examined gender-differentiated language and the role it plays in the continued marginalization of women in the professions. Her study found that men are socialized to be more competitive and to use competitive discourse throughout discussion, whereas women are socialized to use cooperative discourse.  Men in the study were more individualistic, while women often define themselves and understand their world with reference to their relationships. Mediation mirrors this genderization of goals by focusing on cooperation, consensus, and the parties’ relationship. Litigation, on the other hand, takes a masculine approach through competitive discourse and individualistic understandings of relationships. This is because the goal of litigation is best described as winning.

David Berg, an American trial lawyer, recalls the chief justice at his call to the bar telling the new lawyers, “You worry about winning. Let us worry about justice.”  Of course, he acknowledges that winning also “includes great settlements, especially in an age of alternative dispute resolution. But you can’t get great settlements without the credible threat that you will go to trial.”The goal of litigators is to use threats and intimidation to win their cases at the expense of their opponents. This winner-takes-all approach, which pits one party against the other, is conventionally masculine.

And..

In order to foster good communication in mediation, adroit facilitation is essential. Facilitation skills, generally known or understood as “soft skills”, include good communication skills, emotional intelligence, and interpersonal adeptness, and are explicitly gendered female, as is obvious by the reference to “soft”. It is often assumed that women more naturally possess these soft skills, and therefore it is simply taken for granted that these skills are traits of women, and not truly mediation skills. Soft skills – communication to assist and understand others – are highly feminized, focusing on listening, caring, dealing with emotions, and thinking creatively, all in the context of a privately facilitated process, and can be contrasted with the advocacy skills required for litigation.

Successful litigators realize that “much in the way of preparation, imagination, ingenuity, and oratorical skill is required to mount the most persuasive presentation” before the court in an effort to win their cases. Litigation skills focus on the individual litigator and his or her ability to manipulate, coax, and persuade a particular view point, in a public forum, to benefit one party at the expense of the other. Litigation skills are generally assumed to come more easily to men, whereas the “soft skills” of mediation come more easily to women. As a result, mediation becomes gendered female to allow for the appropriate worker pool to be established. When those who do the work are “naturally” suited to work in
that area, the work becomes devalued due to the lack of knowledge and training that is thought to be required for those working to accomplish what comes “naturally”. These differences contribute to the gendering of both processes.

Of course, the most important avenue to pursue is the much more complicated process of revaluing gender. The devaluation of mediation would be rectified if as a society, we overcome our prejudice against all female processes. If we valued female mediation as much as male litigation, we would not need to write this article. Revaluing gender is a crucially important, long-term goal that cannot begin without better education. Unless and until mediative, problem solving approaches become the focus of legal education, mediation will continue to be devalued and viewed as a secondary process to litigation by law students and society alike. Most importantly, it will mean that many who might benefit from the wonderful process of mediation will never be offered, or will not embrace, the opportunity.