The genderization of non-industrial private forest (NIPF) ownership creates different conditions for male and female forest owners. To compare male and female forest management behaviour and to examine whether observed differences should be understood in terms of gender, data from the Swedish National Board of Forestry's interview inquiry were used. Differences in frequency of harvesting and silvicultural operations were examined by binary logistic regression and differences in harvesting volume were tested by a multiple regression analysis. In all analyses sex of the owner was introduced as one of the explanatory variables. The sex of the owner was found to have a significant effect on the frequency of harvesting, cleaning and supplementary planting, but not on planting and mechanized scarification. In the cases when the sex of the owner was a significant factor, the degree of activity among the female owners was found to be lower. Results regarding harvested volumes did not expose any significant differences in harvesting management strategies between male and female owners.

The group of female forest owners is growing across Europe and currently estimated to be about 30% of all private owners. This new category of forest owner merits a closer look. By introducing a gender perspective across three different research frameworks, this paper substantiates that gender matters in forest ownership, management, operations, and the understandings of these three aspects. Where gender-disaggregated data is available, and gender is assessed as an empirical variable, we find the differences in numbers between male and female forest owners in most countries. By adding the concept of gender as a relational and structuralizing category, we demonstrate that gender structures affect, for example, actual behavior of female and male forest owners and the self-evaluation of forestry competence. Further, when considering gender as a meaning category we explore how meaning produces behavior and behavior produces meanings, and how both shape institutions and natural and artificial matter. Here forestry competence is the applied example. To further increase the knowledge on new forest owners, we recommend (i) fellow researchers in the field to assume that gender matters and design their empirical studies accordingly and (ii) policy-makers to guarantee access to gender-disaggregated data in official registers and statistics.