The overview is intended to deepen the understanding of women's roles in environmental and natural resource management. It examines the conceptual and practical connections between gender and the environment, presents an overview of women and natural resource management issues in the Commonwealth, and presents relevant recommendations on women and environmental issues emanating from Commonwealth and international sources.

Gender and Sustainability deals with women's struggles to contend with global forces—environmental change, economic development, discrimination and stereotyping about the roles of women, and diminishing access to natural resources—not in the abstract but in everyday life. It addresses the lived complexities of the relationship between gender and sustainability.

Presents five case studies focusing on the roles and constraints of women in natural resource management.

This book is about the gender dimensions of natural resource exploitation and management, with a focus on Asia. It explores the uneasy negotiations between theory, policy and practice that are often evident within the realm of gender, environment and natural resource management, especially where gender is understood as a political, negotiated and contested element of social relationships. It offers a critical feminist perspective on gender relations and natural resource management in the context of contemporary policy concerns: decentralized governance, the elimination of poverty and themainstreaming of gender. Through a combination of strong conceptual argument and empirical material from a variety of political economic and ecological contexts (including Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Thailand and Vietnam), the book examines gender-environment linkages within shifting configurations of resource access and control. The book will serve as a core resource for students of gender studies and natural resource management, and as supplementary reading for a wide range of disciplines including geography, environmental studies, sociology and development. It also provides a stimulating collection of ideas for professionals looking to incorporate gender issues within their practice in sustainable development. Published with IDRC.

'This book ... should be issued to grass-root organisations everywhere' Doris Lessing, The New Scientist 'It is must reading for government planners, environmentalists and the ordinary layman' Asia Week Women in the Third World play the major role in managing natural resources. They are also the first and hardest hit by environmental mismanagement, yet they are neither consulted nor taken into account by development strategists. lrene Dankelman and Joan Davidson provide a clear account of the problems faced by women in the management of land, water, forests, energy and human settlements. They also describe the lack of response from international organizations. With the help of well-documented case studies they describe the ways in which women can organize to meet environmental, social and economic challenges. Originally published in 1988