Women's organization is crucial to reducing the gender gap. This has been evidenced by 23 women from various Advisory Councils for Protected Natural Areas (ANP) who participated in the meeting “Women Counselors: Exchange of Experiences 2025”.
Mexico experienced an ANP fever in the previous six years and declared dozens of these territories designated for the protection of ecosystems. Thus, the country has 232 ANP. According to official data, there are 92 Advisory Councils operating, bodies for the participation of society to advise decision-making in these natural areas.
“This is an opportunity to recognize that those of us at this meeting have also taken a position and an action in favor of meeting. Already the fact that we meet allows this dialogue, this interaction and this exchange through possible paths for their transformation,” said Ivett Peña Azcona, Zapotec indigenous representative and independent advisor to the ANP National Council.
Peña Azcona highlighted that although there were other counselors who were unable to attend the appointment, it's not necessarily because of a lack of interest, but because of various factors that influence women to be present, such as support networks and coordination processes.
Gender equity in Advisory Councils is a process that has taken years of work. At the Meeting, 13% of these operating bodies were represented through the counselors. What was shared at Casa Xitla in Mexico City will transcend the days together, the participants agreed, since it will contribute to their work once they return home.
“The fruit after the event is that very few women, counselors who work directly in protected natural areas, can meet and talk with women who have similar experiences, but in different contexts. This ability to recognize yourself in others, but also to learn from the experience of others and return to your place of origin or to your areas or to your advice and apply things makes you stronger; not only to do so, but to believe it,” said Adriana Basauri, consultant with long experience in environmental issues and coordinator of this group of counselors.
During the meeting from April 28 to 30, experiences and challenges were shared, both gender and technical, of the ANP. Participations in decisions about how the country's ecosystems are managed must break the glass ceiling.
Women shared their experiences within their advisory councils and highlighted the need to establish routes for gender equity. Photo: Juan Luis Garcia.
Marlene Gutiérrez, alternate advisor to the Advisory Council of the ANP Santuario de Playa Ceuta, shared that, during her application to preside over her board, there were voices that came out to disqualify her because of her gender status and level of education that ended up influencing the process, despite the fact that she has the skills and knows firsthand the protected natural area thanks to the knowledge of the Celestino Gasca community from which she is originally from.
In this way, returning home is an opportunity for other women to not be inhibited from participating. “Teach other women in our community that we can. Let them not let us down. That even if we don't have preparation, we study enough, but we are able to do the same as a studied one. The truth, then that's what I'm taking to convey to them. That they can, and that by trying hard and everything, losing our shame, we can achieve what we want and be on the advisory board,” he said.
Other participants shared that women's status influences women's participation in Councils, a job they do ad honorem, influences issues such as the time they must divide between work and their families.
“We see time a lot as one of women's most important resources, and besides being limited, it's a limited resource for us because well, in our daily lives we play many roles. Sometimes you are the mother, the daughter, the sister and if you work you have a work environment and in these advisory council spaces, because you do community work that also forms a collective community in that council and the time you sometimes have for it is limited and we place a lot of emphasis on using that time, that limited resource, on very certain things that really progress, that are well planned and bear fruit,” said Patricia Hernández, alternate counselor in the Lagunas de Montebello National Park.
The coordinator of the CN Center Applied Research Unit trained on the principles of the GAGE methodology. Photo: Juan Luis Garcia.
At the collective level, Harumi Hayashida, coordinator of the Applied Research Unit of the Causa Natura Center think tank, conducted training on the Methodological Guide for the Evaluation of ANP Advisory Councils with its principles of Open Government, Equity, Gender and Escazú Agreement (Gage), a tool that provides them with a compass to guide their progress and pending with respect to these principles.
“In this part of equity with a gender perspective, what we evaluate is that their regulations or, that there are formal and informal rules, effectively guarantee that women can participate... for example, that they have special hours so that women can participate in the assemblies, that, for example, they can be helped so that they can come to the meetings or that there is a person who can take care of the infants during the meetings. These are a series of measures that women's councils could implement,” Hayashida exemplified.
Norma Alejandra Sánchez Reyes, counselor of the Cabo Pulmo National Park, stressed that the tool has already been applied to several Northwest Councils and that it has served to ensure that replacements in management positions do not break with the work carried out in advisory councils and that there is continuity in the evolution of the Councils.
Dynamics were provided to visually and interactively highlight the gender gap that exists in Advisory Councils. Photo: Juan Luis Garcia.
The meeting was a watershed in the organization of these spaces, since it brought them together in person, after 25 virtual meetings. The participants agreed that union is a condition of possibility for the future of women's participation.
“Someone was talking about a honeycomb, which we could see as, 'oh, the bees are going to attack us'. Or like, 'oh, the bees are pollinating the place'. So maybe we see ourselves as those bees that we are pollinating others, other spaces, to add more women,” said Patricia Hernández.
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