Abstract:
Women are the majority vulnerable in wetlands access and control, yet livelihood provisioning services bring her in direct contact with and control of wetlands on a daily basis. Murang’a County is majorly a patriarchal society and women continue to experience the worst forms of oppression and exploitation in environmental management. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to determine the gender roles in community- based strategies aimed at Wetlands conservation and restoration in Murang’a County, Kenya. It adopted a descriptive survey design with a target population of 144,376 divided into four Sub-Counties of Murang’a. Simple random sampling was used for each stratum to select a sample of 404 respondents. Key Informant interviews, focus group discussion, and documentary analysis were used to corroborate responses from the questionnaires. Qualitative data were coded before the analysis. Quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed using SPSS software version 26.0. Continuous variables were analyzed using a Chi-Square test and P-values of <0.05 at 95% confidence interval level was considered significant. The study revealed that there is gender inequality in conservation efforts due to poor policies, beliefs, lack of knowledge, and skills. The study thus recommends effective gender role equity in wetlands conservation efforts.
