Traditionally, women were not allowed to do certain types of outdoor jobs, and have limited participation and benefit sharing from agricultural and related practices. Thus, this study was conducted to investigate the major barrier and positive lessons of women participation in and benefit sharing from Agroforestry, agriculture, livelihood and conservation practices taking at the Gechi and Mattu woredas. Purposive sampling technique was applied to select six study villages from two woredas, based on their agriculture and agroforestry system and practices in those sites. A combination of household survey, FGD and KII were employed to collect qualitative and quantitative data. Out of 90 participants of the household survey, 52% (47) respondents were female from male headed households, while 48% (43person) were female from female headed household. All (100%) of the respondents confirmed that women in the study areas do participate on different agricultural activities. The majority (80%) of the respondents reported their participation in fruit tree production followed by annual crop farming (69%) and fattening (64%). Equal proportion (62%) of household respondents reported their participation in dairy and poultry production. Moreover, about 35%, 38% and 27% of the respondents agreed the role of women in income generation to the great, medium, and less, respectively. Almost all respondents (96%) perceived that women do benefit from agroforestry and ALC activities they engaged in. About 91%, 57% and 4% of the participants perceived women gain economic, environmental, and socio-cultural benefits from the activities they participated in, respectively. All sources of information identified three major conservation practices implemented in the study woredas namely physical, biological and conservation practices. FGDs and KII reported that women do participate in physical conservation practices such as digging, pit preparation and stone transportation for building structures and biological conservation practices. Household survey respondents reported specific challenges in the communities for taking in tree and tree based value chains and ALC practices including financial shortages (79%), limited access to preferred and quality seedlings (62%) and social barriers/attitude of the community towards engaging women in business (54%). Moreover, the assessment revealed that gender related challenges such as social barriers in gender equity (34%), lack of access to HH resources and empowerment (decision-making power) (29%), limited information access to women (17%), knowledge gap (16%), poor time management (12%) and lack of access to farm inputs (11%) limited their participation in and benefit from agroforestry and ALC practices. About 78%, 76%, 70% and 65% of the household survey respondents reported women’s preference to involve in improved avocado, coffee, banana and tree seedling multiplication activities, respectively. Moreover, 52% of respondents have shown preference to engage in the integration of fruit production with annual crop and animal production, 29% in fruit production with Animal production including dairy cows and 11% in fruit production with beekeeping and fattening. Despite the enormous participation and contribution of women to the agroforestry and ALC practices, their resource management and benefit sharing are constrained by gender related challenges. Development practitioners and Government should work towards increasing awareness of communities to improve their attitude towards women’s resource management and benefit sharing from the farming and other outdoor activities they participated in. Create access to improved and good quality and preferred planting materials at an affordable price at appropriate time. Development organizations and policy makers strongly focus on green job creation for youth and women
