The Kenyan flower industry is one of the largest in the world and it is estimated to contribute around one per cent to Kenya’s gross domestic product (GDP).1 According to the Kenya Flower Council (KFC), Kenya exports about 70 per cent of its cut flowers for sale on the European market.2 Women constitute around 65 to 75 per cent of the workforce in the Kenyan flower industry, performing unskilled and poorly paid jobs.3 Female floriculture workers in Kenya experience high rates of sexual harassment (SH) and other forms of workplace violence.4 SH is deeply rooted in power imbalances between the parties involved, which can impact on the ability of the victim to resist or expressly indicate that the conduct is unwelcome. Such power imbalance can threaten victims into silence, resulting in incidences going unreported.5 According to a study on gender, rights and participation in the cut flower industry in Kenya, SH is particularly prevalent among women who are supervised by male managers.6 It was found that the persistence of SH is related to the hierarchical employment structure of floriculture companies, coupled with the lack of female managerial staff, both of which also prevented women from reporting incidences of SH.

Many in the conservation sphere have noted that robust and gender-equitable stakeholder engagement is crucial in achieving conservation outcomes, ensuring project sustainability and supporting human well-being. However, despite policies, international agreements and increasing requirements of donors, gender is still often viewed as an add-on rather than as a fundamental element of effective conservation. In an effort to overcome this, Conservation International has invested in nearly 20 project sites since 2014 to support targeted gender integration into existing conservation projects. We conducted a survey with practitioners across these sites to examine the barriers to and enablers of gender integration, and practitioners’ perceptions of the benefits and challenges involved in this. Our findings demonstrate the importance of both external drivers (funding requirements) and a supportive environment (capacity building, technical and financial support) in incentivising a focus on gender. Respondents also reported a suite of benefits (e.g. increased participation, higher quality of the project) and costs (mainly financial) related to gender integration. In documenting these efforts to build gender-related capacity, and the associated benefits and challenges, we highlight the importance of gender-responsive conservation initiatives, and evaluate a method of achieving this. As conservation practitioners may be more inclined to listen to each other (given their shared objectives) rather than to gender specialists, this research can help to shift practitioner dialogue and conservation practice to be more open and responsive to gender.