The Upland Development Programme, funded by the Ford Foundation and part of the Integrated Social Forestry Programme in the Philippines, invested heavily in developing local institutions capable of collective decisions and action. For local people, the passport to participation in the project was possession of a stewardship certificate, available to qualified cultivators of landholdings. This paper, written by project officers, found that the stewardship system excluded women from the project, because the certificates were automatically awarded to male partners in households, regardless of who was the registered land owner and in spite of women's demonstrable interest and major investment in farming.

Edna M Alegado, Joselito Francis A Alcaria, Salve B Borlagdan, Isabel M Carillo