| Abstract | This study explores the role of gender in shaping community-based climate adaptation strategies and their contribution to household food security in Madan and Yaepu villages, Tharzi Township, Myanmar. Forest-dependent rural communities in these areas are increasingly affected by climate change, particularly irregular rainfall, extreme temperatures, and flooding, which disrupt agricultural production, forest resources, and local livelihoods. There is still a limited understanding of how gender-specific adaptation strategies operate within forest dependent communities and how these strategies directly contribute to household food security. Particularly, existing studies often overlook women’s informal and subsistence based adaptation roles and fail to integrate gender, adaptation practices, and food security in a single analytical framework.A mixed-methods approach was applied and 220 respondents were interviewed combining structured household surveys and in-depth interviews to capture both quantitative patterns and qualitative insights. The findings explain the clear gender differences in adaptation strategies. Women are mainly engaged in home gardening, non-timber forest product (NTFP) collection, and small-scale livestock farming, which directly contribute to household food availability, nutrition, and daily consumption. Otherwise, men are more participated in agroforestry, seasonal migration, and wage labor, which contribute primarily to income generation and asset accumulation. The study also finds that gender norms strongly influence access to participation in decision making processes. Women have greater responsibility for household food management but remain underrepresented in community-level decision-making and climate planning. However, men control decisions related to long-term investments. These inequalities, combined with women’s heavier workloads, mobility constraints, and wage disparities, limit their adaptive capacity. Moreover, the results show that adaptation strategies are complementary. Women’s activities improve the direct food availability and dietary diversity, while men’s income-oriented strategies enhance economic access to food. The households that combine both types of strategies demonstrate higher resilience and more stable food security compared to those relying on a single approach.To conclude, this study contributes new empirical evidence by demonstrating how gender specific adaptation strategies are complementary in improving household food security, where women’s subsistence-based activities enhance direct food availability while men’s income oriented strategies strengthen economic access to food. It further provides context-specific insights from forest plantation communities in Myanmar, where gendered roles and decision making patterns jointly shape the adaptive capacity and resilience. |
