Factors facilitating and hindering women leadership : a case study of the community-based resource and environmental management organization in Banlahokkrasang, Burirum province, Thailand
Abstract:
A number of women have played a leading role in creating global environmental
consciousness. This study is an attempt to gain an in-depth understanding of women
leadership in Thai rural communities. It focuses on identifying key factors that facilitate
and those that hinder the leadership role and opportunity taken by women. Based on the
case study of a community-based natural resource management organization covering
five communities located in Burirum, a lower part of northeastern Thailand, the study
employs a qualitative method of data gathering and interpretation, centering on semistructured
of key informants and participant observation. Field work was undertaken for a
period of four months from May, August, September to October 2007.
Findings confirm earlier studies in that women tend to take a leading role when it
comes to natural resource protection. Like those in many parts of the world, a group of
Thai women in the poverty-stricken Northeast, have organized themselves to rehabilitate
and protect their community-based forest resources and are led by a well-respected
woman. Viewed from the case study, there are five (5) factors that facilitate leadership
among Thai women: i) having awareness of and a sense of urgency toward the changes
over local resources; ii) being committed to find peaceful solutions; iii) promoting
collective, team learning and action; iv) ability to maintain maximum energy and
enthusiasm; and v) ability to work in coordination with multiple stakeholders and
organizations from outside their own communities. For the factors hindering their
leadership roles and opportunities, it is found to be those associated with the social and
political culture, including namely: a stereotypic women-should-be-at-home notion;
family burdens and constraints; lack of sociability and opportunities given by family and
relatives; and excessive aggression and unlawful intimidation.
Based on the findings, it is recommended that Thai women be encouraged and
given the opportunity at the community level to take a leadership role not only in natural
resource and environmental management but also in the local administrative affairs.