POTENTIAL OF WOODLOT ESTABLISHMENT IN MEETING THE PRACTICAL AND STRATEGIC GENDER NEEDS OF WOMEN IN UPPER WEST REGION, GHAN

Women have been traditionally associated with roles as wives and mothers. Their productive roles especially in agriculture are usually relegated to the background. There is a perceived low relative economic contribution of women mainly because of the exclusion of most of women's activities from the market-place. There is, thus, a need for interventions that will make women's activities more visible and mainstreamed into the market economy. One area of technological improvement that the talent and ingenuity of women can be of great value is natural resource conservation and utilization. This study, thus, focused on using woodlot establishments as a means of achieving women' s practical needs and the possible ways through which they could be used to address women's strategic needs in the Upper West Region of Ghana. Primary data was collected from 60 women involved in woodlot activities and 29 women who are not involved in woodlot activities using a semi-structured interview instrument. Varions participatory rural appraisal (PRA) tools, including use of key informants, focus group discussions, and participant observations, were also used to obtain qualitative information. Discounted cash flow analysis was used to estimate profitability of investment in woodlots and logistic regression analysis was used to identify factors that significantly influence participation in woodlot activities. The study revealed that even though land is relatively scarce in parts of the Upper West Region, it is not a very limiting factor and women can access it for woodlots. A major factor which negatively influences women's participation in the establishinent and maintenance of woodlots was farm activities. The women are required to provide labour on family farms at the time attention is required for young seedlings in the woodlots.