Fair for Women? A Gender Analysis of Benefit Sharing - Benefit Sharing - page 126

6.1 Introduction
For this chapter, five very different benefit-sharing cases have been analysed
(drawn from Chaps. 4 and 5 ) , and it is evident that gender is a real concern for
fair benefit sharing. In all of these cases women were, and continue to be, margin-
alized in key decision-making bodies and processes that have negotiated for and
implemented benefit-sharing agreements. This situation obtains regardless of the
many differences between the societies where the cases are located, for example in
levels of socio-economic and political development.
This chapter provides a gender analysis of benefit sharing. We show the ways in
which women are politically marginalized and the implications of this for genuine
fairness in benefit sharing. International guidelines on benefit sharing are exam-
ined for the extent to which they provide adequate protection for women's rights
in the light of international commitments to such rights. The principle of gender
justice is used as a guiding principle for evaluating whether or not benefit shar-
ing is truly just and fair. The chapter concludes with some specific recommenda-
tions for how women's political participation in benefit sharing might be improved
significantly.
6.2 Gender-Based Vulnerability and Women's Political
Marginalization
Vulnerability has been defined as exposure to probable harm without the capability
or means for protection (Schroeder and Gefenas 2009 ). A gender analysis of vul-
nerability shows that in a hierarchically sexist society 1 gender exposes women to
the risk of political marginalization and deprives them of the capability or means
for protecting their interests (Alvarez-Castillo, Lucas and Cordillera Castillo
2009 ). The marginalization of women in public decision-making takes place in all
types of societies. The degree and features of marginalization have similarities as
well as differences, but all have the same effect: women have less voice in pro-
cesses that affect them. This is clearly seen in the experiences of women in benefit
sharing in the five cases analysed here, where the most significant and common
1 A ' hierarchically sexist society' is equivalent to a patriarchal society, as defined by Karen
Warren: 'As I use the term, “patriarchy” is the systematic domination of women by men through
institutions (including policies, practices, offices, positions, roles), behaviors , and ways of think-
ing (conceptual frameworks), which assign higher value, privilege, and power to men (or to what
historically is male-gender identified) than to that given to women (or to what historically is
female-gender identified) …. What characterizes the position of women under patriarchy is not
that women have no power, valued status, prestige, or privilege; they do…. What characterizes
women's position is the varying degrees and ways women, as a group, are excluded from politi-
cal and economic institutions of power and privilege …. [W]hat women under patriarchy have in
common, as a group, is less institutional power and privilege than men' (Warren 2000 : 64).