Miriam: Climate change is not neutral.
It’s not going affect all of us equally.
Who you are, where you live, how much money you have, the strength of your community - many
many different factors determine how you’ll be impacted.
And climate change is definitely not gender neutral.
And neither are some of the solutions to climate change.
Charlie: Gender inequity is a global problem steeped in long-held cultural attitudes, laws,
and institutions.
And it is many of those ideas and structures that contribute the most to environmental impacts.
So it isn’t that surprising that there is a strong relationship
between gender and climate change.
Miriam: That’s Charlie from the YouTube channel Our Changing Climate, he makes video
essays about the environment and how we interact with it.
And he’s here today to help me explore ecofeminism and the gendered aspects of climate change.
Now, if I put on my SJW hat for a second, and say gender is essentially made-up and how
we present and move through the world is essentially determined by where we grew up and what our
parents and friends told us we ‘are’ and if the whole world recognized that individuals
are individuals and that our sex does not determine our value to the world - well then, we wouldn’t have
this problem.
But as it is - in many cultures and places - men and women are treated really differently.
Quick aside - I apologize to my nonbinary friends out there.
Most of the research in this area looks exclusively at gender as binary.
Which sucks, and is obviously means a lot of people are falling through the cracks.
Gender inequality has a lot of ramifications, but looking at agriculture is one of the easiest
ways to see how the impacts of climate change are gendered.
Charlie: Despite making up 51% of the global population, women make up only a small percentage
of landholders.
And often have less access than men to the cash and credit to buy necessary tools, fertilizers,
and seeds.
Compounded with reduced access to education, outside funding, or co-ops - women are more
vulnerable than men to environmental and climatic changes.
Miriam: For example, if you don’t own the land you work or you don't have cash in hand
- a drought is going to hit you really hard.
You may lose access to the area you were farming or you might not be able to replant this season
or next.
And you might not be able to recover.
Improving the livelihoods of women farmers and closing what is often called the “agriculture
gender gap” will not only provide deeply needed support for women - it may also reduce
emissions.
Women make up about 43% (FAO) of the agricultural workforce in developing countries.
But because of all those things Charlie mentioned, on average women produce less from the same
amount of land as men.
Now this isn’t because women aren’t capable farmers - not at all - providing women farmers
with the same access to resources as men will increase their yields by 20 to 30 percent
providing food to up to 150 million people who are hungry.
And here’s where the possible emissions reduction comes in.
As it currently stands, with the half population underfunded and/or actively repressed, areas
that could provide plenty of resources - like food - don’t.
This creates pressure for further land development.
People go looking for more places to farm. This can lead to deforestation, which is a large driver
of emissions.
Charlie: Part of closing that agriculture gender gap will rely on women having access
to better education - but, beyond that, research has found that educating women is the “single
most important social and economic factor associated with a reduction in vulnerability
to” [environmental] “disasters” (Striessnig et al.)
The number one thing that reduces the impact of disasters is educating women.
And not just the impact of disasters on women, but on EVERYONE.
That’s a huge deal.
Because climate change is intensifying environmental disasters like cyclones, forest fires, droughts,
and floods.
Miriam: But what exactly does ‘education’ mean here?
Is it like, specific courses or best practices?
In this context, and much of the research in this area, education means level
of educational attainment - so that stat Charlie just mentioned - that education is one of the single
biggest factors in reducing vulnerability that looks at the number of
women have reached secondary or higher levels of schooling - so in my brain means
high school. Your mileage may differ based on where you live.
and how they label
schooling.
Educating women also improves economic outcomes - through access to jobs and greater upward
mobility.
It improves health outcomes, decreasing the number of women who die in childbirth, improving
infant mortality, and disease risk.
And - educating more women - it'll also help us reduce emissions.
Charlie: Education goes hand-in-hand with voluntary family planning.
When women have access to the information to choose when and how to have a family it
improves health outcomes and life expectancy of women and children.
Miriam: And family planning programs lead to women having fewer children overall - which
means fewer people contributing to carbon emissions.
However, before we go barrelling into that whole can of worms - it is important to acknowledge
that hundreds of millions of women around the world WANT the access to that education and
those family planning programs as well as the tools to prevent pregnancy (Guttmacher).
Charlie: Family planning programs - importantly - need to be voluntary - to honor the right
of women to choose what they want their own lives to look like.
And we’re not just talking about some high fancy US horse over here - the US is notorious
for our poor sex education.
And here, something like, 45% of pregnancies are unintended (Finer and Zolna).
Providing women around the globe with better family planning is wanted and needed - and
it has the added benefit of reducing emissions.
So to wrap all this up, around the world, environmental impacts are gendered because
of societal and cultural structures.
To change that, we need to provide women with better access to education and resources so
that they can make decisions themselves about how they make money, how they feed themselves and their
families, and what their families look like.
This also means including women when structuring climate or environmental (and frankly, any)
policies.
But it also means, we more often should be looking at the problem of global climate change in a gendered
way - asking questions like how do climatic changes impact a crop that is predominantly farmed
by women, or do women in this area have access to the resources to survive, say, a massive
flood.
Charlie: One possible framework for answering those questions is ecofeminism, which uses
a feminist lens to examine the relationship between the natural world and the oppression
of women.
Over on my channel we ask the questions: What is ecofeminism?
And is it a useful lens for understanding our current social and environmental circumstances?
Miriam: It’s a great video, and perfect part two to inform this kind of practical
discussion of gender and climate change with a loftier, academic, and theoretical ideas.
It also kind of gets at the tension of looking with a purely gendered lens
Go check out that video, subscribe to Our Changing Climate - and let us know if you
have questions in the comments down below.
Thanks so much for watching.