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By Laura Jost, Claire Rapp, and Michael Paul Nelson.
Having a diversity of perspectives in natural resource management is important because diverse perspectives contribute to creative problem solving. However, most people in natural resource management are white men. The increasing number of white women and people of color in natural resource management positions have different experiences in the field than white men.
We surveyed natural resource managers in Oregon and Washington, USA to assess how much people feel like they belong in their job, and how much they feel like the public supports their professional decisions. We find that a higher percentage of our sample was white men than in the Oregon and Washington public at large, demonstrating continued under-representation of diverse people. Women of color were especially under-represented. Further, we find that as years in natural resource management increases, men’s subjective experiences improve and women’s get worse. As women spend more years in natural resource management, their sense of belonging goes down, and how much they feel the public supports them stays the same. In comparison, as men spend more years in natural resource management, their sense of belonging stays the same and how much they feel the public supports them goes up.
This is important because diverse voices can only contribute to creative problem-solving if people listen to those voices. If women do not feel they belong as much as their male coworkers, and if they do not feel the public supports them as much as their male coworkers, then natural resource and public land agencies may not be able to retain them or leverage their perspective and expertise to solve important environmental challenges.
Relational Thinking 