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This paper examines community forest institutions in India and Nepal to assess the impact of increasing women's participation in local decision-making bodies. Its findings support popular assertions that women's effectiveness in such forums depends on their numerical strength and that the proportion for such effectiveness is around a third. However, while women's greater presence is critical, this is not enough. Other factors – such as the individual skill and attributes of decision-making members – help make that presence effective.

There is insufficient rigorous statistical testing in studies about women's participation in decision-making bodies. These studies also do not focus on how numerical strength might empower women in the process of decision-making itself. Active participation (such as attending meetings and speaking up at them) is a necessary intermediate step for women to influence decisions.

Women from poor households are the worst affected by forest use rules formulated by community forest institutions (CFIs) – for example, by restrictions on the extraction of firewood. It is therefore important to focus on women's proportional strength in the executive councils (ECs) of CFIs and its impact on their effective participation in decision-making.

Statistical examination of 135 CFIs in Gujarat and Nepal show that women's proportional strength is important in enhancing women's participation in governance:

• The more women there are in the EC the lower the percentage of meetings with no women. The comfort of numbers in increasing attendance is also emphasised by the women themselves.
• The greater the percentage of women on the EC the more likely that some or most women will speak up. EC women themselves consistently maintain that the presence of other women helps greatly in enabling them to voice their views.
• The percentage of EC women becoming office bearers is higher if they belong to ECs with more than 33 percent women in comparison to those with less that 25 percent women and those in the 25-33 percent range.
• Special interests induce women to speak up: there is a 67 percent greater probability of women speaking up at meetings where the village has reported firewood shortages than where there are no reported shortages.

However, the presence of more women on the EC is not sufficient for ensuring that women become office bearers. Beyond a mandate for including a certain percentage of women as office bearers, leadership training for women may be necessary. Other lessons are that:

• Where women have a personal stake in the outcomes of meetings (such as when experiencing firewood shortages) they are more likely to attend meetings and/or speak up at them.
• ECs with a higher percentage of landless women have greater female attendance. This suggests the importance of including disadvantaged women, and not simply any women, in community governance institutions.
• Prior equality is not necessary for women to assert themselves. Women from disadvantaged households, especially if present in sufficient numbers or with prior exposure to women's empowerment programmes, can be more outspoken in public forums.