Climate Justice and Gender Justice

 

Because of rigid and gendered divisions of labor, women are uniquely vulnerable to climate change and climate disasters, and are also uniquely positioned to implement “green” solutions. Factors like race, class, and ethnicity have been readily integrated into climate discourse, yet it continues to be mostly gender blind. And this blindness permeates every aspect of the movement: its ignoring of women’s voices, vulnerabilities, and agency; its domination by male perspectives at every level, international planning and expertise to local leadership on-the-ground that is almost inevitably male; and its inability to interrogate how its own efforts may be adding to or reinforce the structural inequality of women and girls.

This has led some scholars and advocates to insist that there can be no climate justice without gender justice, because attempts to address climate change— whether its impacts or to mitigate its effects—are inseparable from the lives of women.