The role of gender and ethnicity in perceived public support and sense of belonging among resource management professionals in Oregon and Washington, USA

Federal and state land agencies lack diversity at the natural resource manager level, in turn limiting the agencies' capacity for creative problem solving needed for complex and wicked environmental problems. Diverse representation is imperative to increase public support and trust in natural resource management. We used an online survey method to examine the relationship and experiences between independent demographic variables (e.g. gender, ethnicity and years worked in natural resources) and two dependent variables: (1) perceived public support and (2) sense of belonging for resource management professionals in the Pacific Northwest, USA. We find in general, that gender is associated with how one progresses through a career in natural resource management. As years in natural resource management increases, sense of belonging decreases for women and remains constant for men. Similarly, as years in natural resource management increases, perceived public support increases for men and remains constant for women. Given that ample past research suggests strong links between sustainable management and diverse perspectives, this study has implications for addressing our current and future natural resource management challenges. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
Keywords: diversity equity and inclusion; natural resource managers; public acceptability; public land managers