Amazon entrepreneurs: Women's economic empowerment and the potential for more sustainable land use practices

This study focuses on the effects on rural women's empowerment of participation in collective microenterprises: access and decision-making power for land use, as well as on changes in their resource management practices. We explore a very specific effect of women's empowerment on efforts to implement more sustainable livelihood practices by women participating in collective microenterprise activities. The study used a qualitative research design, carrying out semi-structured interviews with 65 rural women participants of eleven collective microenterprises in the Amazonian states of Pará and Acre, Brazil. The results showed that women's economic empowerment contributed to their strengthened capacity for adaptive governance in the household due to improvements in their awareness of environmental issues and practices used to manage forest resources; and greater access to resources and to decision-making power about land use.