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Gaps and Silences: Gender and Climate Policies in the Global North
Abstract
For decades, feminist activists and scholars have stressed the importance of integrating gender perspectives into the most defining challenge of our time: the climate disaster. In this article, we analyze official Norwegian policy documents in the context of regional and supra-national levels. We identify a lack of connection between gender equality policy and climate policy in the Norwegian policy documents that is symptomatic of a general silence on gender in climate policy in the Global North. We argue that there is untapped potential for gender mainstreaming in Norwegian climate policy and suggest that gendered, disaggregated data on climate issues could be combined with scholarly insights about the Nordic gender equality model so as to further our understanding of the climate crisis. Finally, we ask whether the absence of gender perspectives in Norwegian climate policy may reflect an unrecognized contradiction between Nordic gender equality policy and sustainability.
... Data and evidence on women and climate change in the Global North is still at an emerging stage (Magnusdottir and Kronsell, 2021;Eggebø et al., 2023). In terms of the distributional dimensions, research focuses more on emissions-based differences rather than on the differential impacts of climate change. ...
... In terms of transport, research finds that men are typically more car dependent. Women are more likely to use public transport, walk or cycle (Eggebø et al., 2023) and their mobility patterns mean that they are more likely to travel shorter distances (Johnsson-Latham, 2007;Bonewit and Shreeves, 2015;Cohen, 2015). Diet based differences are also evident, with men more likely to be meat eaters (Bonewit and Shreeves, 2015). ...
... This initiative sought to uncover the specifics of gender differences and climate change in Global North contexts and examined differences in how women and men affect the climate, are impacted by climate change and in their participation in climate policy decision making processes. Follow up, however, has also been less than systematic (Eggebø et al., 2023). Momentum has been growing since 2020, especially with the publication of A Green and Gender Equal Nordic gender gap in environmental concern which tends to be greater in more affluent countries. ...
This report provides a baseline review of Irish environmental
and climate policy for the National Women’s Council (NWC)
and Community Work Ireland (CWI) Feminist Communities
for Climate Justice project (FCCJ) from the perspective of
intersectional feminist climate justice
... Data and evidence on women and climate change in the Global North is still at an emerging stage (Magnusdottir and Kronsell, 2021;Eggebø et al., 2023). In terms of the distributional dimensions, research focuses more on emissions-based differences rather than on the differential impacts of climate change. ...
... In terms of transport, research finds that men are typically more car dependent. Women are more likely to use public transport, walk or cycle (Eggebø et al., 2023) and their mobility patterns mean that they are more likely to travel shorter distances (Johnsson-Latham, 2007;Bonewit and Shreeves, 2015;Cohen, 2015). Diet based differences are also evident, with men more likely to be meat eaters (Bonewit and Shreeves, 2015). ...
... This initiative sought to uncover the specifics of gender differences and climate change in Global North contexts and examined differences in how women and men affect the climate, are impacted by climate change and in their participation in climate policy decision making processes. Follow up, however, has also been less than systematic (Eggebø et al., 2023). Momentum has been growing since 2020, especially with the publication of A Green and Gender Equal Nordic gender gap in environmental concern which tends to be greater in more affluent countries. ...
... Furthermore, adapting the UNFCCC GAP into a framework for an assessment in a Nordic, national context posed challenges, due to the GAPs design for supra-national application in a global climate policy context, as noted by Eggebø, Lundberg & Teigen (2023). ...
... As also pointed out by Eggebø, Lundberg & Teigen (2023) the UNFCCC GAP furthermore contains many indications of the Global South as the primary context of implementation, leaving the impression that gender mainstreaming climate initiatives are less relevant within the Global North: ...
... Anfinsen and Heidenreich (2017) highlighted that women and men have different gender roles in energy consumption, choice of energy sources, and energy transition towards modern energy (Adjakloe et al., 2021;Anfinsen and Heidenreich, 2017). Räty and Carlsson-Kanyama (2010) also found that gender differences affect a household's energy choice patterns (Bush and Clayton, 2023;Eggebø et al., 2023;Ekim et al., 2023). Male dominance is prevalent in societal structures, where men assume decision-making roles in both the household and wider community. ...
In the present situation, renewable energy has become a vital source to mitigate energy crises and environmental threats. In order to ensure that women’s contributions, knowledge and opinions represent a significant portion of the expanding energy sector, it is crucial to approach the development of renewable energy from a gender perspective. Bibliometric analysis was performed to identify prior research on two primary terms, “Gender” and “Renewable Energy”, from 1995 to 2022. Identifying the most influential countries, authors, publications, journals, and co-occurrence of keywords helps to understand the evaluation and trends of the research through network visualisations by bibliometric approach. This paper presents a comprehensive bibliometric review of the influence of gender on renewable energy. The result of this paper gives details picture of the gender impact on renewable energy during the period from 1995 to 2022. The paper centred on bibliometric and cluster analysis based on the two most important databases, Web of Science and Scopus. The study involved utilising various bibliometric tools, including R Studio, VOSviewer, and Biblioshiny. The study revealed an increase in publica tions and citations during the third period since 2017, after the United Nations set the target of the Sustainable Development Goal. Most influential countries and productive authors belong to China, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom. Energy Research and Social Science are predominated in publications on the research topic. In addition, the co-occurrence of keywords found major keywords related to this topic, such as renewable energy, gender, women, knowledge, sustainability, climate change and sustainable development. Finally, the study observed a huge research gap because developing nations are more affected by the lack of gender-influencing policies on the growth of renewable energy. Thus, the study provides a comprehensive overview of research in this field that can help researchers and stakeholders identify potential ways for future research in gender considerations on renewable energy access by formulating effective policies to change society and reach the Sustainable Development Goals.
Gender equality has been a crosscutting issue in Horizon 2020 with three objectives: gender balance in decision-making, gender balance and equal opportunities in project teams at all levels, and inclusion of the gender dimension in research and innovation content. Between 2017 and 2022, the EU funded, in collaboration with national agencies, 13 transnational projects under "GENDER-NET Plus" that explored how to best integrate both sex and gender into studies ranging from social sciences, humanities, and health research. As the projects neared completion, forty researchers from these interdisciplinary teams met in November 2022 to share experiences, discuss challenges, and consider the best ways forward to incorporate sex and gender in research. Here, we summarize the reflections from this workshop and provide some recommendations for i) how to plan the studies (e.g., how to define sex and/or gender and their dimensions, rationale for the hypotheses, identification of data that can best answer the research question), ii) how to conduct them (e.g., adjust definitions and dimensions, perform pilot studies to ensure proper use of terminology and revise until consensus is achieved), and iii) how to analyze and report the findings being mindful of any real-world impact.
Feminists’ scholarship and critique of gender climate injustice have exposed just how scarce the practical efforts to correct it are. The challenge of generating incentives designed to encourage urban planning that accounts for expected intersectional vulnerabilities during climate disasters reflects a gap in knowledge: how does professionals’ awareness of intensified vulnerabilities inform climate adaptation plans (CAPs)? We propose an intersectional critical feminist perspective evaluating recognition, dialog, and budgeting that decodes the social process by which professionals’ knowledge of intersectional vulnerabilities is lost before informing CAPs. Based on an empirical investigation of the increasing gender awareness among administrators who accumulate knowledge about women’s vulnerabilities, our analysis contributes an explanation of the marginalization of gender mainstreaming toolkits in urban CAPs. We show that even in municipalities characterized by increasing levels of recognition, relevant knowledge rarely informs the dialog, and planning appropriate responses for intersectional vulnerabilities is left unbudgeted.
Growing awareness of environmental issues and their relation to consumption patterns has given rise to calls for sustainable consumption across the globe. In this article, we focus on the zero waste lifestyle movement, which targets high-consumption households in the Global North as a site of change for phasing out waste in global supply chains. Our article is concerned with asking how gender and household sustainability are mutually constituted in the zero waste lifestyle movement. We establish an analytical tension between understanding zero waste living as a further intensification of feminised responsibility for people and the planet and as offering potential for transformational change – as feminised concern or feminist care. Through qualitative content analysis of the 10 most influential zero waste blogs globally, we show how the five zero waste rules of conduct – refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle, and rot – guide consumers towards everyday and situated engagements with waste. Organised by three cross-cutting themes – communing with nature, organising time, and spending money – we present the normativities these rules call into being for reconfiguring domestic activities such as cooking, cleaning, and grocery shopping. In the discussion, we draw out the implications of zero waste living’s emerging, contradictory gender normativities, while recalling the political economy in which it is situated, namely a neoliberal, postfeminist landscape. We identify a continued feminisation of domestic responsibilities that is uncontested in zero waste living but also explore the progressive potential of waste-free living to bring collective, naturecultural worlds into being as part of domestic environmental labour.
This book explores how climate institutions in industrialized countries work to further the recognition of social differences and integrate this understanding in climate policy making.
With contributions from a range of expert scholars in the field, this volume investigates policy-making in climate institutions from the perspective of power as it relates to gender. It also considers other intersecting social factors at different levels of governance, from the global to the local level and extending into climate-relevant sectors. The authors argue that a focus on climate institutions is important since they not only develop strategies and policies, they also (re)produce power relations, promote specific norms and values, and distribute resources. The chapters throughout draw on examples from various institutions including national ministries, transport and waste management authorities, and local authorities, as well as the European Union and the UNFCCC regime. Overall, this book demonstrates how feminist institutionalist theory and intersectionality approaches can contribute to an increased understanding of power relations and social differences in climate policy-making and in climate-relevant sectors in industrialized states. In doing so, it highlights the challenges of path dependencies, but also reveals opportunities for advancing gender equality, equity, and social justice.
In rich, developed countries, many stakeholders are focusing on households as settings where progress can be made on environmental and sustainability issues. Related research, policies and interventions, however, tend to ignore gender dynamics, thus treating them as irrelevant, or exploit them to achieve sustainability goals. We challenge this regressive treatment and show how household sustainability can be progressive in relation to gender and sustainability simultaneously – doubly progressive. Specifically, we ask: How do gender and sustainability intersect in households? What are the normative implications of these intersections? To answer these questions, we disentangle the perspectives of ‘work’ and ‘care’, drawing on feminist and gender scholarship, and explore both in the domestic setting by focusing on sustainable technologies and sustainable consumption. In this way, the twin normative agendas of equality of work and expansion of care emerge as ways of linking gender and sustainability in households. Our conclusion considers tensions and overlaps between work and care to identify how they can be re-entangled. We argue that re-entangling work and care requires holding them in dynamic tension with care being the context for work and in this way a doubly progressive approach to household sustainability emerges.
Gender identities are relevant for sustainable transport. By analyzing the synergies between gender inequality (as a problem), and lack of sustainability (another problem), there is a potential to create an understanding of how these problems are linked. Our aim is to better understand how gendered norms find expression in transport policy and planning. Taking a starting point in gender studies we advance four ideal types on masculine and feminine norms and relate them to sustainability in transport. We advance a methodology for studying gender norms in relation to sustainability in terms of how they are expressed in the text. We contribute to a deeper understanding of transportation related to men and masculinity studies, and advance work by masculinity scholars to include sustainability in transportation issues. Through text analysis, we demonstrate empirically how four Swedish municipalities have developed their (sustainable) transport policies 2014–2018. Our results indicate that the level of sustainability, in plans and strategies, are related to the presence of diverse masculine and feminine norms rather than male and female bodies.
This paper argues for inclusive engagement within Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) interdisciplinary research, particularly, energy and climate research, by reflecting on the attempts to implement an inclusive engagement approach in SHAPE ENERGY, a Horizon 2020 project aimed at creating a European energy-SSH platform where a broad range of viewpoints from researchers, businesses, policymakers, NGOs, and citizens could be brought to bear on energy policy discussions. The European Horizon 2020 funding program has sought to explicitly integrate gender considerations into their funded projects, including SHAPE ENERGY. Our study shows that, in spite of such ambitions, there was huge variety with regard to how gender was understood as well as how notions of gender were engaged with during the project. Dealing with gender was often reduced to counting men and women, while wider concerns, such as representations of age, geography, field of expertise, etc., were comparatively neglected. In this paper, we argue that gender equality strategies should embrace these wider perspectives to sufficiently address how various forms of intersectionality may inform and strengthen inclusive engagement.
To achieve an energy transition favouring renewable energy in the face of climate change, several countries in the EU region have pursued different economic incentives to encourage citizens to invest in household solar systems. This enables citizens to become 'prosumers' who produce electricity for their own consumption and sell excess produced electricity to the central grid supply. Influencing people's energy consumption in this way can potentially reach EU's renewable energy targets, as prosumers add to the stock of renewable energy nationally. Through in-depth interviews with men and women from 28 households in Norway and the United Kingdom, this article explores the process of becoming a prosumer and the energy practices in prosuming households. Drawing on theories of social practice and domestication, the article pays particular attention to how the phases of appropriation, objectification, incorporation and conversion of household solar systems are gendered in the sense that women and men have different economic, social and cultural capital, and to how this influences their interaction with technology in the transition from consumers to prosumers. Viewing prosuming through the gender lens reveals how policies need to be designed to promote new practices that are attractive for a more diverse group than today's standard subsidies and feed-in tariffs if the aim is to increase the number of residential prosumers and transition to a more sustainable and equitable low-carbon energy system.
There are large discrepancies in the transport sector along gender lines in travel patterns and means of transportation used, but also in attitudes and norms among citizens, planners and decision-makers, with women generally more positive towards measures involving the lowering CO2 emissions. At the same time, the number of women involved in transport-related decisions is low. This is a problem for gender equality but possibly also for sustainability. A careful review of previous studies indicated a lack of analyses on the subject based on quantitative data at the local level. We investigated a possible link between women’s presence in local policymaking and more sustainable transport policies, and whether it is possible to capture such an effect. The main contribution of this paper is a methodological approach in which, besides generating unique data on representation in municipalities (confirming men’s dominance, specifically in transport policymaking), possibilities for quantitatively measuring gender and the level of sustainability in transport planning are discussed and tested. Challenges in collecting relevant data and analyzing possible covariances in the data set are discussed and presented as well as suggestions for further investigations into the possible link between gender and sustainable transport performance.
In their article ‘Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States’ the authors state: ‘Clearly the extent to which the conservative white male effect on climate change denial exists outside the US is a topic deserving investigation.’ Following this recommendation, we report results from a study in Norway. McCright and Dunlap argue that climate change denial can be understood as an expression of protecting group identity and justifying a societal system that provides desired benefits. Our findings resemble those in the US study. A total of 63 per cent of conservative males in Norway do not believe in anthropogenic climate change, as opposed to 36 per cent among the rest of the population who deny climate change and global warming. Expanding on the US study, we investigate whether conservative males more often hold what we term xenosceptic views, and if that adds to the ‘cool dude-effect’.¹ Multivariate logistic regression models reveal strong effects from a variable measuring ‘xenosceptic cool dudes’. Interpreting xenoscepticism as a rough proxy for right leaning views, climate change denial in Norway seems to merge with broader patterns of right-wing nationalism.
Sammendrag: Denne artikkelen undersøker hvordan klimafenomenet presenteres i to norske stortingsmeldinger: Norsk klimapolitikk og Nordområdene. Visjon og virkemidler (2011-2012). Klimakommunikasjon har i det siste tiåret fått mye oppmerksomhet og et voksende antall publikasjoner har studert ulike lingvistiske og diskursive sider av så vel vitenskapelige som politiske fremstillinger av klimaendringer. Målet med denne artikkelen er å bidra til dette feltet gjennom en analyse basert på et teoretisk rammeverk som inkluderer narrative og polyfone (flerstemmige) perspektiver. Norge er en stor olje- og gassprodusent samtidig som landet er anerkjent som ledende i miljøspørsmål; to ulike roller som reflekteres i landets politikk. Analysen av de to dokumentene avdekker konkurrerende “fortellinger” i samsvar med disse rollene. Dette reiser spørsmålet om hvilken innvirkning motstridende klimaperspektiv fremsatt av samme regjering har på folks meninger, holdninger og adferd. Abstract: This article explores how climate change is framed in the Norwegian White Papers on Climate Policy and on the High North (2011-2012). Climate change communication has become increasingly salient in recent years, and a growing number of publications have studied various linguistic and discursive matters of both scientific and political representations of climate change. The present paper aims at contributing to this field through an analysis based on a theoretical framework comprising approaches of narrative and polyphonic (multi-voiced) perspectives. Norway is a large oil and gas provider, and the country also has a reputation as leading in environmental issues; two different roles which are reflected in the country’s policies. The analysis of the two documents uncovers competing “stories” in line with these roles. This finding raises the question of what impact conflicting frames have on public opinion, attitudes and behaviour.
Gender experts are being recruited and gender routinized in the everyday work of international environmental organizations today. To what extent do these changes open up spaces for reorienting sustainability debates in terms of normative commitments to promoting gender equality and justice? We explore this question by studying how gender is done in one such organization meant to work towards sustainability. We examine how work with gender is organized - the experts employed and their possibilities to influence events as well as how gender is addressed in the texts produced in the course of organizational work. We find that while abstractions for a global audience may distance debates on sustainability from people on the ground, contrary to current thinking, the depoliticized and disciplined narrative on gender can also open up a space for counter discourses on gender by providing a platform from which to destabilize dominant debates on sustainability. We suggest that a close analysis of the shaping of global and official discourses on sustainability can provide insights into how we may interrupt discourses that re/produce inequalities.
Zusammenfassung Abels und Mushaben (2012) argumentieren, dass in der Europaischen Union ein doppeltes Demokratiedefizit bezogen auf Geschlecht existiert: Frauen seien in den EU-Institutionen unterreprasentiert und der EU-Politik fehle es insgesamt an einer Geschlechterperspektive. Dieser Beitrag tragt mit einem spezifischen Fokus auf Klimapolitik zu dieser Forschungsperspektive bei. Die EU ist eine wichtige Konstrukteurin des internationalen Klimaregimes und sie hat sich gleichzeitig verpflichtet, Gender Mainstreaming umzusetzen. Daruber hinaus sind in Europa geschlechtsspezifische Unterschiede bezogen auf das Verhalten zum und Ansichten uber den Klimawandel dokumentiert. Dieser Artikel untersucht, wie relevant das doppelte Demokratiedefizit in der EU Klimapolitik ist. Wir stellen die Anteile der Expertinnen und Experten bei den zustandigen Referaten fur Klimapolitik in der Europaischen Kommission dar und zeigen mit Dokumentenanalysen und Interviews mit politischen Entscheidungstrager*innen, dass geschlechtsspezifische Aspekte in den EU Klimadokumenten nicht enthalten sind. Mittels feministischem Institutionalismus kommen wir zu dem Ergebnis, dass die bestehenden geschlechtsspezifischen Machtverhaltnisse innerhalb der Kommission die erforschten Klimaeinheiten beeinflussen und diese mannlich konnotierte institutionelle Praktiken reproduzieren. ----- Abstract Abels and Mushaben (2012) argue that there is a double democratic deficit in the European Union regarding gender: women are underrepresented within the EU institutions and gender awareness is lacking in EU policymaking. This article contributes to this scholarship with a specific focus on the climate domain. The EU is an important constructor of the international climate regime and the Union is committed to gender mainstream all its policies and processes. Furthermore, there are documented gender differences in Europe regarding behaviour and views on climate change. This article investigates the relevance of the double democratic deficit for the EU´s climate policymaking. We map the representation of female and male experts at the European Commission´s climate units and search for gender recognition in the EU´s climate documents. There we discover silence regarding gender, confirmed through interviews with policy-makers. Using feminist institutionalism we conclude that existing gender power relations within the Commission affect the explored climate units, which reproduce masculine institutional practices. ----- Bibliographie: Magnusdottir, Gunnhildur Lily/Kronsell, Annica: The Double Democratic Deficit in Climate Policy-making by the EU Commission, Femina Politica, 2-2016, S. 64-76. https://doi.org/10.3224/feminapolitica.v25i2.25353
Climate change and related adaptation strategies have gender-differentiated impacts. This paper reviews how gender is framed in 41 papers on climate change adaptation through an intersectionality lens. The main findings show that while intersectional analysis has demonstrated many advantages for a comprehensive study of gender, it has not yet entered the field of climate change and gender. In climate change studies, gender is mostly handled in a men-versus-women dichotomy and little or no attention has been paid to power and social and political relations. These gaps which are echoed in other domains of development and gender research depict a ‘feminization of vulnerability’ and reinforce a ‘victimization’ discourse within climate change studies. We argue that a critical intersectional assessment would contribute to unveil agency and emancipatory pathways in the adaptation process by providing a better understanding of how the differential impacts of climate change shape, and are shaped by, the complex power dynamics of existing social and political relations.
Most current approaches focused on vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation to climate change frame gender and its influence in a manner out-of-step with contemporary academic and international development research. The tendency to rely on analyses of the sex-disaggregated gender categories of ‘men’ and ‘women’ as sole or principal divisions explaining the abilities of different people within a group to adapt to climate change, illustrates this problem. This framing of gender persists in spite of established bodies of knowledge that show how roles and responsibilities that influence a person´s ability to deal with climate-induced and other stressors emerge at the intersection of diverse identity categories, including but not limited to gender, age, seniority, ethnicity, marital status, and livelihoods. Here, we provide a review of relevant literature on this topic and argue that approaching vulnerability to climate change through intersectional understandings of identity can help improve adaptation programming, project design, implementation, and outcomes.
Researchers of adaptive capacity and sustainable livelihoods have frequently used social, cultural, human, economic and institutional capitals to better understand how rural and resource-dependent communities address environmental, social and economic stresses. Yet few studies have considered how men and women contribute differently to these capitals to support community resilience overall. Our research sought to understand the differential contributions of Sami men and women to the adaptive capacity of reindeer husbandry and reindeer herding communities in northern Sweden. Our focus revealed a gendered division of labour in reindeer herding as an economic enterprise as well as gendered contributions to a broader conceptualization of reindeer husbandry as a family and community-based practice, and as a livelihood and cultural tradition. Based on our results, we recommend that community resilience be enhanced by generating more opportunities for men to achieve higher levels of human and economic capital (particularly outside of herding activities) and encouraging women to contribute more directly to institutional capital by participating in the formation and implementation of legislation, policies and plans.
How has globalization changed social inequality? In this groundbreaking book, Globalization and Inequalities, Sylvia Walby examines the many changing forms of social inequality and their intersectionalities at both country and global levels. She shows how the contest between different modernities and conceptions of progress shape the present and future. The book re-thinks the nature of economy, polity, civil society and violence. It places globalization and inequalities at the center of an innovative new understanding of modernity and progress and demonstrates the power of these theoretical reformulations in practice, drawing on global data and in-depth analysis of the U.S. and EU. Walby analyzes the tensions between the different forces that are shaping global futures. She examines the regulation and deregulation of employment and welfare; domestic and public gender regimes; secular and religious polities; path dependent trajectories and global political waves; and global inequalities and human rights. Globalization and Inequalities is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students and academics of sociology, social theory, gender studies and politics and international relations, geography, economics and law.
In many EU countries, the so-called social investment perspective has provided new arguments for active welfare state policies. The social investment perspective is characterized by emphasizing the role of the state to increase participation in employment by investing in the working capacity of the population—particularly women—through activation programmes and social policies. In this article we depart from recent debates surrounding this perspective to explore changes in Norwegian work and welfare policies, and the role of gender equality in these changes. In Norway, both female employment and fertility levels are high, but women still have a looser connection to the labour market compared to men, for example due to the large proportion in part-time positions, which makes changes in work and welfare policies an interesting case for exploring the relevance of the social investment perspective in this context. The empirical analysis suggests that ideas of social investment indeed have permeated recent changes in Norwegian work and welfare policies. However, questions of gender equality are not addressed in the documents introducing these changes, except when the problem at hand is the employment rate of migrant women—who are the main recipients of activation policies. In conclusion, we claim that social investment is a relevant lens for analysing changes in Norwegian work and welfare policies, but that a dual-tracked vision of gender equality is emerging, making migrant women the significant target of social investment.
This paper conveys the findings of the first phase of a longitudinal study into climate change adaptation in Atlantic Canada. Men and women from 10 coastal communities in three provinces (Quebec, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island) were interviewed to better understand how both sexes perceived and reacted to extreme weather events. Their responses were recorded based on their experiences, personal and community levels of preparedness, as well as help received and effects on their lives. Most importantly, the findings denote that more men were personally prepared and more active in the community than women. More men recognized a deficiency in help at the community level, and were critical of government in particular, addressing a lack of financial interventions and support. Women were forthcoming with their emotions, admitting to feeling fear and worry, and their perceptions in terms of impacts and actions were closer to home. The results support what others have shown that in rural and coastal communities the traditional division of labor may influence and lead to a gender bias in terms of actions and gradual adaptation in communities. There is a need to better understand how these sometimes subtle differences may affect decisions that do not always consider women's roles and experiences in the face of extreme events.
Gender mainstreaming has the ambition to promote policy learning. The specific problem that is the focus of this article centres on the conditions for learning as part of gender mainstreaming in public procurement processes. The article is based on a case study of an occupational health project in a municipality in northern Sweden where gender main- streaming was included in public procurement as part of the initiative. The main question asked is: can public procurement be an instrument for policy learning in gender main- streaming? The results show that policy learning was part of the process for both the contractor and the suppliers. The municipality and the suppliers also to some extent en- gaged in co-learning and joint development work. The article discusses some limitations and problems that were encountered. The results showed that the relevant question was not only whether policy learning can occur but what kind of learning is possible and necessary for the envisioned policy outcomes in terms of gender mainstreaming. The study highlights the dilemmas encountered in public procurement processes and their consequences for policy learning. The study also contributes to an understanding of the application, and outcomes, of gender mainstreaming in different contexts.
This article uses feminist institutionalism to examine how gender mainstreaming has been sidelined in European Union (EU) climate change policy. It finds that, with a few exceptions largely emanating from the European Parliament's Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality, EU responses to climate change are gender-blind. This is despite the Treaty obligations to gender mainstream policy in all areas and despite the intersections between climate change and development policy, which is renowned for having taken gender equality and women's empowerment seriously and for instigating gender mainstreaming and specific actions as a means to achieve them. The persistent invisibility of gender can be attributed to various forms of institutional resistance.
A major challenge in studies of environmental governance is dealing with the diversity of the people involved at multiple levels – villagers, development agents, policy-makers, private resource users and others – and taking seriously their aspirations, conflicts and collaborations. This book examines this challenge in two very disparate parts of our world, exploring what gender-equality, resource management and development mean in real terms for its inhabitants as well as for our environmental futures.
Based on participatory research and in-depth fieldwork, Arora-Jonsson studies struggles for local forest management, the making of women’s groups within them and how the women’s groups became a threat to mainstream institutions. Insights from India, consistently ranked as one of the most gender-biased countries, are compared with similar situations in the ostensibly gender-equal Sweden. Arora-Jonsson also analyzes how dominant ideas about the environment, development and gender equality shape the spaces in which women and men take action through global discourses and grassroots activism.
Questioning the conventional belief that development brings about greater gender equality and more efficient environmental management, this volume scrutinizes how environmental imaginations are key to crafting gender relations. It shows gender to be at the heart of environmental negotiations while at the same time making a case for environmental sensibilities as integral to gender relations. At the confluence of development, environmental and gender studies, the book contributes to a much-needed dialogue between these fields, proposing new futures in environmental management.
http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415890373/
For reviews of the book see: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09614524.2014.884541?journalCode=cdip20#.VbtbvothefQ
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10460-014-9521-7
Analyses of climate change and the forest sector have identified the importance of individual actors, institutions, and organizations within communities for effective adaption and climate mitigation. Yet, there remains little recognition of how the internal dynamics of these institutions and organizations are influenced by gender and other social considerations such as age and culture. Research from developing countries and cognate resource sectors suggests that these considerations are critical for enhancing local adaptive capacity. Despite extensive review of forestry research across North America and western Europe, we found almost no research that addresses how differential social capabilities within forest-based communities affect adaptation to climate change. In this paper, we document the potential that gender sensitivity might provide to conceptions and practical applications of adaptive capacity and identify four types of research opportunities to address this gap: (i) developing disaggregated capitals frameworks; (ii) creating inclusive models; (iii) informing social planning; and (iv) understanding gender mainstreaming. Research focused on these opportunities, among others, will provide more robust theoretical understanding of adaptive capacity and strategic interventions necessary for effective adaptation.
This article argues that the unintended gender consequences of EU development policy are caused not (or not only) by the failure to gender mainstream, but by the way in which gender slips off the agenda once other policies intersect with development. Policy coherence for development (PCD) is an attempt to prevent policies in other areas having a negative impact on development, but although it claims that gender is a crosscutting issue, there is little evidence that gender features at the intersections between development and other related areas. Therefore, gender must be kept at the forefront of policy analysis if unintended gender consequences are to be avoided.
This article explores the link between gender representation and climate policy-making in Scandinavia. We ask to what extent equal descriptive representation (critical mass) results in substantive representation (critical acts). Our study shows that women and men are equally represented in administrative and political units involved in climate policy-making, and in some units women are in the majority. However, a text analysis of the outcomes, that is, the Scandinavian climate strategies, reveals a silence regarding gender, further confirmed through interviews. Accordingly, a critical mass of women does not automatically result in gender-sensitive climate policy-making, recognizing established gender differences in material conditions and in attitudes toward climate issues. In interviews, we also note that policy-makers are largely unaware of gender differences on climate issues in the Scandinavian context. We discuss why a critical mass of women in climate policy-making has not led to critical acts and offer alternative explanations informed by feminist IR theory. For example, poststructural feminism claims that masculine norms are deeply institutionalized in climate institutions; hence, policy-makers adapt their actions to the masculinized institutional environment. Thus, substantive representation should be understood in relation to gendered institutional processes.
Investigations of the interconnectedness of climate change with human societies require profound analysis of relations among humans and between humans and nature, and the integration of insights from various academic fields. An intersectional approach, developed within critical feminist theory, is advantageous. An intersectional analysis of climate change illuminates how different individuals and groups relate differently to climate change, due to their situatedness in power structures based on context-specific and dynamic social categorisations. Intersectionality sketches out a pathway that stays clear of traps of essentialisation, enabling solidarity and agency across and beyond social categories. It can illustrate how power structures and categorisations may be reinforced, but also challenged and renegotiated, in realities of climate change. We engage with intersectionality as a tool for critical thinking, and provide a set of questions that may serve as sensitisers for intersectional analyses on climate change.
This article examines and explains the adoption of gender mainstreaming by the European Union (EU), and traces its implementation in five issue-areas of EU policy: Structural Funds, employment, development, competition, and science, research and development. The EU decision to adopt gender mainstreaming, as well as its variable implementation across issue-areas, can be explained in terms of three factors derived from social movement theory: the political opportunities offered by EU institutions in various issue-areas; the mobilizing structures, or European networks, established among the advocates of gender equality; and the efforts of such advocates to strategically frame the gender-mainstreaming mandate so as to ensure its acceptance by EU policy-makers.
This article discusses multicultural challenges to state feminism in Denmark and Norway, focusing both on similarities and differences in the two countries policy responses. In spite of important differences, we point towards similar problems and dilemmas in the public responses to multiculturalism and diversity among women connected to a state feminist agenda that in both countries has been rather one-sided in its conception of what women-friendliness may imply. The first part of the paper expands on institutional `tracks': (Variations in) state feminist traditions, in religious traditions, and in the inclusion of organizations of civil society in political power. The second part explores the framing of the hijab as a political issue of `intersections' of gender equality versus religious belongings. The third part investigates what we see as a `dead end' in policy making to prevent violations of women's rights; that is the general, age based, restrictions on family unification as a means to combat forced marriages. Finally, we emphasise the importance of participatory women-friendly politics that include all who are affected by political decisions.
The concept of the women-friendly welfare states, introduced by the Norwegian political scientist Helga Maria Hernes in 1987, has had a considerable influence on welfare theory and research. In this article the normative basis and the analytical potential of the concept are explored. The concept can be criticized for its bias towards social democratic welfare states, which has challenged its analytical potential. Instead of abandoning it altogether, the authors suggest that an alternative could be to reformulate and contextualize the concept with gender equality as the key notion. The reformulation would make it possible to distinguish analytically between women-friendliness and policies that promote gender equality between different dimensions of welfare, and between civil and political from social aspects of citizenship.
In the limited literature on gender and climate change, two themes predominate – women as vulnerable or virtuous in relation to the environment. Two viewpoints become obvious: women in the South will be affected more by climate change than men in those countries and that men in the North pollute more than women. The debates are structured in specific ways in the North and the South and the discussion in the article focuses largely on examples from Sweden and India. The article traces the lineage of the arguments to the women, environment and development discussions, examining how they recur in new forms in climate debates. Questioning assumptions about women's vulnerability and virtuousness, it highlights how a focus on women's vulnerability or virtuousness can deflect attention from inequalities in decision-making. By reiterating statements about poor women in the South and the pro-environmental women of the North, these assumptions reinforce North–South biases. Generalizations about women's vulnerability and virtuousness can lead to an increase in women's responsibility without corresponding rewards. There is need to contextualise debates on climate change to enable action and to respond effectively to its adverse effects in particular places.
This article analyzes the implementation of gender mainstreaming at the local level in Sweden by investigating implementation gaps in the operations of two municipalities, Eskilstuna and Jönköping. The study draws on the literature on policy implementation, particularly the dimensions of comprehension, capacity, and will, as well as the feminist institutional literature on resistance. The data are based on a micro-study of the implementation of gender mainstreaming in two model municipalities, comprising interviews with key actors and a document study. The study shows that the key obstacles to the implementation of gender mainstreaming are complacency—that is, the perception that work on gender mainstreaming is satisfactory and that no extra attention to the matter is needed—and the congestion of perspectives—the fact that the gender equality perspective must compete with other relevant perspectives, a process in which gender equality is often the loser. Another obstacle is lack of political will. However, lack of political will, even in model municipalities, may be compensated for by solid systems of governance. The study contributes to research on implementation theory and feminist institutionalism by demonstrating the gendered barriers and obstacles to affecting change, even in best-case scenarios.
Livelihood, employment, subsistence, and recreational practices of rural and Indigenous communities in the global North are increasingly impacted by climate hazards such as wildfire, floods, and drought. However, communities are often viewed as homogenous entities, with little recognition to how diverse individuals within those communities experience and respond to such hazards. Intersectionality, a concept derived from feminist theory, offers a promising lens for delineating how power relationships and interacting social characteristics such as gender, race, ethnicity, class, location, and age influence context specific experiences of climate hazards. In this paper, we relate our findings from a rapid literature review identifying how intersectionality is currently being approached in climate hazards research of the global North. With these findings, along with insights from theoretical intersectionality scholarship, we then develop an analytical framework composed of five attributes to guide empirical research on the social dimensions of climate hazards in rural communities of the global North. The framework offers a means for comparative intersectional research, contributing to an enhanced understanding of socially equitable and culturally appropriate adaptive responses, outcomes, and decision-making.
https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1Z~z62eyKFZfl~
Gender equality is firmly established on the European Union development policy agenda. However, a series of interrelated crises, including migration, security and climate change, are becoming more prominent in European Union development policy. This article asks whether development objectives have been subsumed under these crisis-driven European Union priorities, whether this is compatible with efforts to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment through development cooperation and whether it will affect the ability to keep gender equality high on the European Union’s development policy agenda. The theoretical framework draws on horizontal policy coordination and nexuses. The analysis of European Union development policy documents shows how migration, security and climate change are constructed as crises, how they intersect in various nexuses and how gender intersects with each of these nexuses. This research finds that gender equality is absent from the migration–security–climate nexuses, which are increasingly driving development policy priorities. The article argues that it is quite straightforward to keep gender equality on the development policy agenda, but it is difficult to retain a focus on gender equality when multiple policy areas intersect. The research suggests that the discourse of crisis has blocked the way, and this will have an impact on the European Union’s internal and external activities.
This article is a collation and synthesis of the literature review with the focus on the vulnerability of rural women in developing countries to climate change on the one hand and being pro-active in adapting to climate change on the other. The geographic coverage of the literature is global but with specific examples from India. The information presented in this paper is derived from diverse sources including journal articles and thematic books, and indicates severe adverse impacts not only on women's livelihood opportunities but also on exacerbating the workload and fatigue while decreasing their self esteem and forcing them to undertake some high risks and hazardous activities. The literature indicates that poverty, gender inequality, insecure land rights, heavy reliance on agriculture, less access to education and information are among the principal reasons for their vulnerability to climate change. The vulnerability is also confounded by the meager asset base, social marginalization, lack of mobility and exclusion from the decision-making processes in response to a disaster. However, the literature also shows that women are not only the passive victims of climate change but are also pro-active and agents of hope for adaptation to and mitigation of abrupt climate change. They utilize their experience and expertise to reduce the adverse impacts by adopting prudent strategies. They are also concerned about environmental issues, and are highly supportive of policies regarding environmental restoration. Large knowledge gaps exist regarding the vulnerability of women to changing and uncertain climate especially in arid regions. Authors of this article suggest some action plans and strategies to minimize vulnerability to climate change such as empowering women economically and educationally, organizing training and outreach programmes, and involving them in formal climate change mitigation and adaptation policies and programmes. Authors also outline research needed in order to identify and implement strategies regarding climate change. Collective and continuous efforts are critical to finding the sustainable solutions for this global phenomenon which is adversely impacting the most vulnerable but critically important members of the society.
A survey of rural communities in North and Central Yakutia provides an opportunity to identify and analyze the social consequences of natural disasters related to climate change, with a focus on the gender dimension. It was found that in situations of natural disasters archaic patterns of gender behavior tend to appear. The social anxiety of rural residents differentiates by gender. The shrinking of “living space” is noted by representatives of both sexes: the reduction of the areas of hayfields, pastures, deterioration of the transport and communications infrastructure under the influence of climatic changes. The men, mostly middle-aged and older, are concerned about the prospect of the loss of traditional occupations. Men consider it necessary to preserve traditional occupations and are more oriented to stay in ancestral lands. The women of these age groups are more concerned about the threats to health and safety associated with the effects of climate change. Women are more willing than men to change either location or occupation or both. The gender and age gap in life strategies is a serious threat to the safety (sustainability) of the rural communities of Yakutia.
This study reviews the literature on gender relations and climate change. Gender analysis contributes to our understanding of: (1) vulnerability and climate change impacts; (2) adaptations in different contexts; (3) responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions; (4) inequalities in climate governance; and (5) knowledges and social action on climate change. Overall, the literature has established that gender relations are an integral feature of social transformations associated with climate change. This poses a challenge to gender‐blind social research into climate change. Without gender analysis, we omit key aspects of social life in a changing climate. It is vital that the gendered character of climate change is recognized and further explored in the social sciences and humanities. WIREs Clim Change 2017, 8:e451. doi: 10.1002/wcc.451
This article is categorized under:
• Perceptions, Behavior, and Communication of Climate Change > Perceptions of Climate Change
• Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Sociology/Anthropology of Climate Knowledge
Introduction Institutions such as the military and state defense organization are central to the field of international relations. Simultaneously, they represent and reify specific gender relations. This chapter centers on methodological issues for feminist researchers interested in these institutions. They are institutions of hegemonic masculinity because male bodies dominate in them, and have done so historically, and a particular form of masculinity has become the norm (Connell 1995: 77). Although many institutions of importance to international relations can be categorized as institutions of hegemonic masculinity, the defense and military organizations have a particularly strong standing. The basis for my methodological reflections is a research puzzle aimed at mapping out and making sense of the gendered practices of the Swedish military and defense organization. Examples are given throughout from the study of military and defense institutions in Sweden. My approach starts from post-structural feminism and gives weight to structural components of gender relations, reproduced when individuals perform within institutions. It follows that I see institutions in general as important for understanding gender relations, but I have a particular interest in institutions of hegemonic masculinity. Apart from feminist IR work I have found much help in organizational studies dealing with gender and sexuality (Hearn and Parkin 2001; Wahl et al. 2001; Alvesson and Billing 1997; Hearn et al. 1989). Here I suggest that gender dynamics of these institutions be studied through analysis of documents, places and narratives.
This paper offers a critical review of the international literature on gender, disaster and rural masculinities. Empirical reference is made to bushfires in Australia, offering new evidence from the State of Victoria. Bushfires loom large in the Australian imagination and there is an increasing amount of research now being conducted in relation to bushfire events. A significant gap remains, however, with regard to the issue of gender. Despite increasing evidence that gender plays a significant role with reference to disaster risk assessment, preparation and response, a gendered analysis of bushfire preparation and response has not been a sustained research priority. Building on the writing of others, a critical assessment is provided of the concept of a specifically Australian, rural hegemonic masculinity as a possible way of better understanding the social dimensions of gender, and bushfire preparation and response in the Australian context. This conceptual consideration is extended to draw attention to the process whereby alternative conceptions of masculinities may emerge. This recognition provides a basis for further research on gender and disaster internationally.
The converging roles of men and women are among the grandest advances in society and the economy in the last century. These aspects of the grand gender convergence are figurative chapters in a history of gender roles. But what must the "last" chapter contain for there to be equality in the labor market? The answer may come as a surprise. The solution does not (necessarily) have to involve government intervention and it need not make men more responsible in the home (although that wouldn't hurt). But it must involve changes in the labor market, especially how jobs are structured and remunerated to enhance temporal flexibility. The gender gap in pay would be considerably reduced and might vanish altogether if firms did not have an incentive to disproportionately reward individuals who labored long hours and worked particular hours. Such change has taken off in various sectors, such as technology, science, and health, but is less apparent in the corporate, financial, and legal worlds.
This article elaborates on and discusses gendered dimensions of climate change response in Swedish municipalities. There are indications that attitudes and behaviour to the environment and climate change are gendered. This evidence together with our own work further indicates that gender awareness is most probably an important influence on how municipalities respond to climate change. The aim of this study was to investigate if and how gendered aspects of climate change response are integrated in the Swedish response to climate change. The potential causal relationships between a high level of awareness of the gendered aspects of climate change and the levels of climate change response were investigated. We asked whether there is a positive relationship between gender awareness and the quality of the communities' climate change policies and practice. Indications of such a relationship prompt a change in research priorities – paying more attention to gender – and in subsequent policy developments.
This book introduces an approach to policy analysis called 'what's the problem represented to be?' It argues that policies contain implicit representations of the 'problems' they purport to address and that these 'problem representations' need to be subjected to critical scrutiny. The book targets the way in which 'women's inequality' is represented as a 'problem' by examining key policy initiatives in the areas of education, pay equity, abortion, sexual harassment, domestic violence and equality policy.
This article explores the place of race, class, gender, sexual and national identities and cultures in global climate change. Research on gendered vulnerabilities to disasters suggests that women are more vulnerable than men to many meteorological disasters related to climate change, specifically flooding and drought. This is because of their relative poverty, economic activities (especially subsistence agriculture) and the moral economies governing women's modesty in many cultures. Research on historical and contemporary links between masculinity and the military in environmental politics, polar research and large-scale strategies for managing risk, including from climate change, suggests that men and their perspectives have more influence over climate change policies because of their historical domination of science and government. I expect that masculinist identities, cultures and militarised institutions will tend to favour large-scale remedies, such as geoengineering, minimise mitigation strategies, such as reducing energy use, and emphasise ‘security’ problems of global climate change.
Debate continues to rage as to the veracity of evidence around the permanence of climate change. There is no doubt that changes are occurring across the world and that these changes are causing significant social hardship, including food and water insecurity and large-scale movements of people. What is also emerging in research across the world is that these social impacts and adaptations are highly gendered. This article draws on several years of research on the Australian drought and more recent research on declining water availability in the Murray—Darling Basin of Australia. It notes the significant social impacts, particularly in remote and irrigation areas, and draws out the gendered impacts of these changes. The article argues for more sensitive rights-based social policy to address people who are under extraordinary stress during times of unparalleled change.