In recent years, forest conservation paradigms have shifted from a focus on centralized planning and management by government agencies towards more collaborative governance approaches that bring together a wide range of actors such as central government, civil society organisations and local communities. In Tanzania, Community Based Forest Management (CBFM) has been incorporated within global market-based initiatives, such as Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification and Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) initiatives, which have brought more actors in forest governance. These partnerships emphasize on the need to promote gender equality in all processes of decision making, planning, implementation and benefits sharing as a means to achieve better environmental and livelihoods outcomes. In this paper, I assess whether these partnerships address gender issues in forest governance and what impact they have at the local level. I compare two forms of forest management partnerships in Tanzania: ‘simpler partnerships’ that are state-led and ‘more complex partnerships’ that combine CBFM, forest certification and REDD+. The material presented in this paper comes from fieldwork conducted in Kilwa District in 2017 and 2018, which included key informants interviews, focus group discussions and participant observation. My preliminary findings indicate that the implementation of complex partnerships has brought more actors in forest governance at the local level, such as the Mpingo Conservation Development Initiatives (MCDI) and WWF. These actors play key role in implementing gender inclusive policies and programmes. I find that in complex partnerships both men and women were equally represented in management committees and forest-related activities and also participated more equally in meetings and in decision making processes – compared to villages in simpler partnerships. However, there were variations across locations on how men and women were involved, and also among men and women, based on their social economic status. These variations can have differential impacts on sustainability outcomes.