Wildlife trafficking is an illegal industry that some estimate is worth $5–23 billion USD annually; it occurs in over 120 countries around the world and involves multiple taxa of species, including mammals, corals, reptiles, bony fishes and birds. Across source, transit and destination geographies of wildlife trafficking networks, wildlife trafficking harms people, wildlife and ecosystems. African countries, their wildlife and their people feature significantly across all these trafficking spaces. Amongst the corpus of literature on wildlife trafficking in Africa, the role of women is rarely explored. Women comprise approximately half of the earth's population and thus have the potential to be at least half of the problem causing, and solutions resolving, wildlife trafficking risks. The role of African women in wildlife trafficking remains mostly unknown and under addressed by conservation science and policy. We synthesized the existing literature on roles of women in wildlife trafficking published between 2010 and 2019, creating a novel gender-integrated conceptual framework to guide our synthesis. Our conceptual framework for women in wildlife trafficking includes six primary and 31 secondary roles. Beyond using the conceptual framework for profiling trends and gaps in the literature, we consider how and where the roles of women in wildlife trafficking could be mainstreamed by conservation biologists, criminologists, and other stakeholders. Efforts to overcome challenges to combatting wildlife trafficking will likely benefit from increased attention to, and mainstreaming of, the role of women in wildlife trafficking. Such efforts will require evidence upon which to anchor and goalposts upon which to aim; without attending to the roles of women in wildlife trafficking, such evidence will not exist for conservation.

野生动物贩运是一种非法产业，据估计每年价值5-23亿美元；它发生在全球120多个国家，涉及多种种类的物种，包括哺乳动物，珊瑚，爬行动物，骨鱼类和鸟类。在野生生物贩运网络的源，过境和目的地地区，野生生物贩运都对人，野生生物和生态系统造成伤害。非洲国家，其野生动植物及其人民在所有这些贩运空间中都占有重要地位。在有关非洲野生动植物贩运的文献中，很少探讨妇女的作用。妇女约占地球人口的一半，因此有潜力成为造成野生动植物贩运风险并解决问题的至少一半问题。非洲妇女在野生动植物贩运中的作用仍是未知数，保护科学和政策尚未对此予以解决。我们汇总了2010年至2019年发布的有关妇女在野生动植物贩运中的作用的现有文献，创建了一个新颖的性别综合概念框架来指导我们的综合。我们针对野生动植物贩运中妇女的概念框架包括六个主要角色和31个次要角色。除了使用概念框架来描述文献中的趋势和差距外，我们还考虑了保护生物学家，犯罪学家和其他利益相关者如何以及在哪里将妇女在野生动植物贩运中的作用纳入主流。克服对野生动植物贩运的挑战的努力将可能得益于对妇女在野生生物贩运中的作用的日益重视和主流化。这种努力将需要证据作为基础，目标为目标；如果不考虑妇女在野生动植物贩运中的作用，就不会有这样的证据进行保护。