Workshop to help motivate women in forestry industry

A GENDER equity and social inclusion workshop in Lae on Wednesday aimed at  encouraging women participation in the forest industry and increased project benefits for them.
The workshop at Timber Forestry Training College (TFTC) was convened by the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries under the Australia Centre for International Agriculture Research (ACIAR) project in PNG.
ACIAR project engineer Judith Jiap said one of the social impacts the project hoped to have was enhancing the role of women in the forestry sector.
She said all projects had impacts on the community and the ACIAR project looked at ways to identify and value roles of women in enhancing more participation.
“When women are actively involved, this will maximise on the flow of the project benefits to women,” Jiap said.
The gender equity and social inclusion is now the key performance indicator in the ACIAR project which started in the country in 2014.
Jiap said  an increasing number of women employed in the forest sector but not many of them werte in the management roles and that was something the project was trying to address.