Throughout the region, forestry projects include gender awareness as a specific part of their work program. They are involved as labourers in forestry projects and as professional and technical staff in the forestry departments. As labourers, women work in nurseries and plantation establishments. Their involvement in logging and wood processing is limited to a few isolated cases in Zimbabwe and Tanzania. Female forest technicians and professionals are generally posted to extension units and nurseries of forest departments.
Few women work in forest research and educational institutes.
A notable exception is in Mozambique, where women make up 40 percent of the forestry department staff and are represented at all levels of responsibility. Enrolment statistics gathered from educational institutions provide an indication of women's limited access to the technical and professional circles. Average enrolment of women since 1984 in Malawi and Tanzania at the certificate and diploma levels has been a low 13 percent and 7 percent, respectively. At the university undergraduate level over the last 20-year period, only 6 percent of graduates from Tanzania's Morogoro University were women. Although some women certainly have benefited from the SADC forestry projects, socio-economic impact and gender studies need to be carried out to determine the degree to which men and women have participated and benefited.