Culture change in the Forest sector: Insights from a participatory workshop at the Women's Forest congress

This study draws on collaborative work done during the inaugural Women's Forest Congress in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, attended by over 500 diverse professionals in the public and private sectors in the fall of 2022. The Congress was designed to encourage women and other minoritized gender identities to think critically about their role in the forest and natural resource sector and the workforce, and to generate workplace recommendations that promote greater retention of women in the profession. Our study is based on a World Café-style workshop at the Congress, during which approximately 60 women engaged in prompt-guided dialogue on their current and ideal workforce conditions within the forest and natural resource sector, and related professional communities. Participants provided their reflections through both written and verbal responses. We utilized content and thematic analysis techniques to review participant responses and identify emerging themes around opportunities and barriers that women and other minoritized gender identities may face related to workforce inclusion and career advancement. We distinguished 17 community-identified desired areas of change, key in creating a more inclusive working culture within the forest and natural resource sector, that support long-term engagement across diverse members of the workforce. Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Access (JEDIA) and work policy were prompted as the most cross-cutting themes for creating cultural change. As participants were predominantly from the US and Canada, results largely reflect women from those countries. Future work would benefit from studying similar trends among a more globally representative sample of women in the forest sector.