Gendered Barriers and Adaptive Strategies in Sustainable Ecosystem Management in Lupanda, Zimbabwe: A Feminist Political Ecology Analysis

Abstract This article examines the gendered barriers constraining rural women’s participation in sustainable ecosystem management (SEM) in Lupanda, Zimbabwe. It integrates Social Exclusion Theory (SET), Feminist Political Ecology (FPE), and intersectionality to explain how institutional arrangements, gendered ecological labour, and intersecting inequalities shape women’s access to resources and decision-making authority. The study draws on semi-structured interviews with 30 women, dialogues with 15 key informants, and documentary analysis. Interview and dialogue data were thematically analysed using NVivo, with documentary materials providing additional contextual evidence. The findings show that patriarchal governance, economic marginalisation, information exclusion, and time poverty reinforce one another, concentrating environmental responsibilities among women without corresponding governance authority. Women respond through cooperative networks, livelihood diversification, and the transmission of indigenous ecological knowledge, demonstrating substantial adaptive capacity that does not necessarily translate into institutional influence. Building on these findings, the article proposes the Gender-Ecosystem Governance Model (GEGM), comprising four interrelated pillars: empowerment and capacity building, institutional reform, economic inclusion and resource access, and knowledge integration and co-production. The study’s distinctive contribution is its demonstration that ecological responsibility does not necessarily translate into governance authority, together with a contextually grounded framework for addressing the relationship between ecological labour, resource access, and decision-making power. As a qualitative single-case study, it offers analytical insights rather than statistical generalisations; the proposed model requires further evaluation across different contexts.