Challenging the concept of active forest ownership: the perspective of women forest owners in Finland

Abstract

In Finland, women comprise 41% of private forest owners. However, studies examining forest ownership from the gender perspective are scarce. Forestry and forest ownership is a field dominated by masculine and techno-economic values. For example, this is manifested in the ideal of ‘active forest owner’ in forest policy documents. Therefore, this dissertation studied the concept of ‘active forest ownership’ from the perspective of women forest owners. Different conceptual lenses were used, such as the gender theory and service-dominant logic. Specifically, the thesis focused on four questions: 1. Are women less active than men when a variety of forestry related activities are studied? (Article I); 2. How do women forest owners understand the concept of active forest owner, how does it differ from the one from Finnish forest policy and what kind of attributes impact women forest ownership? (Article II); 3. Do women forest owners have differing objective structure compared with men? (Article III); and 4. Is the relationship between objectives and activity different between women and men? (Article IV). Both quantitative (Articles I, III and IV) and qualitative (Article II) methods were applied. Articles I and III employ exploratory factor analysis and Article IV confirmatory factor analysis. Two sets of data were used: a questionnaire of the Finnish Forest Owner 2020 research project (n=6558) and 22 semistructured interviews. In this thesis, women were found to be less active than men when a selection of forestry related activities were studied (Article I). Women forest owners also had more diverse objective structure compared with men (Article III). In addition, the relationship between forest owner objectives and activity differed between genders (Article IV). Women also defined the concept of ‘active forest owner’ as a much wider concept than Finnish policies. (Article II). These findings suggest that forest ownership is a gendered performance and that there is a lack of service-dominant logic, that is, value cocreation corresponding to the objectives of women. More specifically, the results indicate that women owners need support, especially when forest ownership is something new. Furthermore, gendering and the prevailing forest values impact the whole forest owner population, their behaviour and forest owner research. Understanding this can enable the design of more equal and inclusive forest policies and services.