| Summary: | This thesis explores how gender influences local access to resources through a case study of an upland community in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. It also teases out the implications of these gender dynamics for the implementation of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) in Vietnam. To address the complexity of the chosen topic and case study, I employ a theoretical framework that fuses both Ribot and Peluso’s (2003) theory of access and Feminist Political Ecology (Rocheleau et al. 1996). The qualitative methods encompass interviews, participant observation, life histories and photovoice. My findings show that gendered access to resources is shaped by various factors including gender, ethnicity, age, culture and social status. Gendered access to resources can also be negotiated through social relations including kinship, conjugal relationships and political connections to local authorities at the household and community levels. Resource access, however, is not only concerned with local actors. When it comes to decision-making regarding resource access, both national and local actors are involved. Accordingly, the legal systems of resource management imposed by the Vietnamese state and the customary ways of resource use practised by local villagers in Kala Tongu are both brought to bear in decision-making in different ways at different levels. These national-local dynamics of resource access might take different forms. On the one hand, the politics of decision making at the national level often results in gender policies being less prioritised and being limited to women’s participation, which might contradict local understandings of gender. On the other hand, everyday politics within the village also feed into the wider debates about what is actually happening around resource access and reflect local expectations of how these forestry policies should be implemented.
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