System Development

Summary.- The idea that there is a positive synergy between women’s interests and environmental conservation is examined here at two levels. First, we discuss the two main arguments in women, devel-opment and environment (WDE) literature, i.e. that women have a special and close relationship with nature, and that women are particularly altruistic and caring in their environmental management. We then scrutinize the WDE view that women are therefore the “natural ” constituency for conservation pro-jects and programs by demonstrating how a gender analysis provides both a superior framework for understanding women’s and men’s environmental relations and a potentially contrary view of the syner-gy between gender interests and environmental conservation