Gender Analysis

Citation:

Carr, Edward R., and Mary C. Thompson. 2014. “Gender and Climate Change Adaptation in Agrarian Settings: Current Thinking, New Directions, and Research Frontiers.” Geography Compass 8 (3): 182–97.

Authors: Edward R. Carr, Mary C. Thompson

Abstract:

The impacts of climate variability and change impinge upon different lives and livelihoods within agrarian populations in complex ways. While academic, donor, and implementer efforts to understand and act on this complexity have been profoundly influenced by gender analysis, most contemporary analyses are predicated on a construction of gender as binary (men versus women). This approach runs contrary to current understandings of gender and identity in the wider social science literature, which treats gender as a social categorization that takes meaning from its intersection with other identities, roles, and responsibilities. An emerging adaptation literature takes on this intersectional approach to gender, making conceptual, methodological, and empirical arguments against assessing the vulnerability of agrarian populations to the impacts of climate variability and change through binary gender categories. This literature argues that binary approaches are likely to overlook the specific challenges facing significant portions of any agrarian population, and therefore can result in maladaptive interventions that enhance, instead of ameliorate, the vulnerability of the most marginal and vulnerable. Though this emerging literature makes a compelling case for change, efforts to convince the academic and implementation communities focused on agrarian adaptation to adopt intersectional gender analyses point to two broad research frontiers. First, convincing these communities of the value of this shift will require an expanded, rigorous empirical base of evidence for who is overlooked by binary gender analysis relative to intersectional analysis in particular places. Second, facilitating the implementation of intersectional approaches will require methodological innovations that have thus far been under-addressed in this literature.

Topics: Agriculture, Environment, Climate Change, Gender, Gender Analysis, Intersectionality, Livelihoods

Year: 2014

Citation:

Hathaway, Julia Robertson. 2020. “Climate Change, the Intersectional Imperative, and the Opportunity of the Green New Deal.” Environmental Communication 14 (1): 13–22. 

Author: Julia Robertson Hathaway

Abstract:

This article discusses why climate change communicators, including scholars and practitioners, must acknowledge and understand climate change as a product of social and economic inequities. In arguing that communicators do not yet fully understand why an intersectional approach is necessary to avoid climate disaster, I review the literature focusing on one basis of marginalization – gender – to illustrate how inequality is a root cause of global environmental damage. Gender inequities are discussed as a cause of the climate crisis, with their eradication, with women as leaders, as key to a sustainable future. I then examine the Green New Deal as an example of an intersectional climate change policy that looks beyond scientific, technical and political solutions to the inextricable link between crises of climate change, poverty, extreme inequality, and racial and economic injustice. Finally, I contend that communicators and activists must work together to foreground social, racial, and economic inequities in order to successfully address the existential threat of climate change.

Keywords: climate change, intersectionality, gender, feminist, inequities, Green New Deal

Topics: Economies, Poverty, Environment, Climate Change, Gender, Gender Analysis, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equity, Race

Year: 2020

Citation:

Kher, Jagriti, and Savita Aggarwal. 2020. "Gender Analysis Approach to Analyzing Gender Differentiated Impacts of Coping Strategies to Climate Change." In Handbook of Climate Change Resilience, edited by Walter Leal Filho, 2097-124. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.

Authors: Jagriti Kher, Savita Aggarwal

Abstract:

Provision of safe water and fuel for the household is important Practical Gender Needs (PGNs) of women, which in turn are crucial to enable them to meet their Strategic Gender Needs (SGNs) of education, income, and control over resources. Climatic change and extremes coupled with demographic, socioeconomic, and technological changes enhance the scarcity of natural resources and negatively impact poor women much more as they cope by trudging longer distances to procure prime resources for the household. The present study examines the gender-differentiated impact of coping strategies to climate change using secondary data from published research conducted across developing countries using Moser’s gender analysis framework. The study has shown that most of the coping strategies practiced by families had much greater negative impacts on women and children as compared to males. The study also highlighted that gender analysis framework is a useful methodology to assess the impact of climatic stresses and extremes on men and women. If the Sustainable Development Goals of eradicating poverty, achieving good health, and access to quality education, safe water, and sanitation facilities and above all gender equality have to be met, it is very important to invest in basic infrastructure to provide for the Practical Gender Needs of women. Besides improving their quality of life, such investments will enable women to focus on their Strategic Gender Needs and also enhance their adaptive capacity to lead climate resilient lives.

Topics: Environment, Climate Change, Gender, Gender Analysis, Women, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Year: 2020

Citation:

Assan, Elsie, Murari Suvedi, Laura Schmitt Olabisi, Kenneth Joesph Bansah. 2020. “Climate Change Perceptions and Challenges to Adaptation among Smallholder Farmers in Semi-Arid Ghana: A Gender Analysis.” Journal of Arid Environments 182. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaridenv.2020.104247

Authors: Elsie Assan, Murari Suvedi, Laura Schmitt Olabisi, Kenneth Joseph Bansah

Abstract:

Gender-sensitive climate change adaptation strategies can improve gender equality and women’s development in agrarian communities. This study used both qualitative and quantitative research methods (focus group discussions, key informant interviews, and household surveys) to explore the perspectives of men and women on climate change, including climate change impacts on their farming activities and household well-being, and challenges faced in mitigating climate change impacts. The empirical data showed similarities in climate change perceptions between men and women, and rising temperatures, shortened cropping season, and increasing erratic rainfall as the main climatic stressors. Lack of money and inadequate access to labor among women and inadequate access to extension and old age/poor health among men were the major constraints to mitigating climate change impacts. Integrating gender needs in climate change adaptation planning and intervention development can help build resilient farm households. 

Keywords: climate change perceptions, gender inequality, agriculture, food security

Topics: Agriculture, Environment, Climate Change, Gender, Gender Analysis, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Health, Households, Security, Food Security Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Ghana

Year: 2020

Citation:

Fröhlich, Christiane, and Giovanna Gioli. 2015. “Gender, Conflict, and Global Environmental Change.” Peace Review 27 (2): 137–46.

Authors: Christiane Fröhlich, Giovanna Gioli

Annotation:

Topics: Conflict, Resource Conflict, Environment, Climate Change, Gender, Gender Analysis, Gender Roles, Gendered Power Relations, Livelihoods

Year: 2015

Citation:

O'Manique, Colleen, and Sandra J. MacLean. 2010. “Pathways among Human Security, Gender, and HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne Des Études Africaines 44 (3): 457-78.

Authors: Colleen O'Manique, Sandra J. MacLean

Abstract:

Topics: Economies, Gender, Gender Analysis, Health, HIV/AIDS, Livelihoods, Security, Human Security

Year: 2010

Citation:

Volo, Lorraine Bayard de. 2012. “A Revolution in the Binary? Gender and the Oxymoron of Revolutionary War in Cuba and Nicaragua.” Signs 37 (2): 413-39.

Author: Lorraine Bayard de Volo

Annotation:

The urgency posed by the U.S. “War on Terror” prompted a renewed surge in feminist analyses of war and security, with far-reaching implications for gendered approaches to political violence. The primary focus has been on the United States and its allies. Considerably less attention has been given to smaller nations of the global South, including revolutionary states that resist U.S. neoimperialism. Through the cases of Cuba and Nicaragua, this essay addresses this gap in the literature by training a gender lens on the ways in which the revolutions in smaller nations—first as guerrilla armies, then as revolutionary states—hailed a revolutionary public and discursively engaged with other states by means of certain gendered logics. Gendered analysis of such revolutionary logic is a relatively unexamined means to understand a fuller range of wars and security events. In turn, a focus on armed insurrection and security events of revolution also generates insight into gender relations and efforts at gender equality.

Topics: Gender, Gender Analysis, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Non-State Armed Groups, Security Regions: Americas, Caribbean countries, Central America Countries: Cuba, Nicaragua

Year: 2012

Citation:

Drumond, Paula, and Tamya Rebelo. 2020. “Global Pathways or Local Spins? National Action Plans in South America.” International Feminist Journal of Politics, August, 1–23.

Authors: Paula Drumond, Tamya Rebelo

Abstract:

With the upsurge in the adoption of National Action Plans (NAPs) to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 (2000), scholars have made attempts to better understand the global, regional, and national formulations of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. Commitments to the agenda have emerged in South America in recent years, and this article critically examines what governments understand and indicate as appropriate ideas and practices for engaging with the global WPS architecture. By considering the specific security challenges experienced in the region, the article interrogates the extent to which South American countries have been emulating or innovating in terms of the content of NAPs. We argue that, despite some innovative elements that are bubbling up from these documents, the appropriation of the agenda by governments has mostly emulated traditional “peace” and “security” frames that are notably at odds with the insecurities and realities facing South American women. As feminist research gains new impetus with the twentieth anniversary celebrations of UNSCR 1325, our findings provide new insights into the workings of this agenda in a region that has been under-explored within WPS scholarship.

Keywords: UNSCR 1325, South America, National Action Plans, policy diffusion, WPS

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gender Analysis, Peace and Security, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, UNSCR 1325 Regions: Americas, South America

Year: 2020

Citation:

Cook, Sam. 2019. “Marking Failure, Making Space: Feminist Interventions in Security Council Policy.” International Affairs 95 (6): 1289-306.

Author: Sam Cook

Abstract:

Feminist interventions in international politics are, more often than not, understood (and visible) as interventions in relation to policy documents. These policies—in this case the United Nations Security Council's resolutions on Women, Peace and Security—often feature as the end point of feminist advocacy efforts or as the starting point for feminist analysis and critique. In this article the author responds to the provocations throughout Marysia Zalewski's work to think (and tell) the spaces of international politics differently, in this case by working with the concept of feminist failure as it is produced in feminist policy critique. Inspired by Zalewski's Feminist International Relations: exquisite corpse, the article explores the material and imaginary spaces in which both policies and critique are produced. It picks up and reflects upon a narrative refrain recognizable in feminist critiques on Women, Peace and Security policy—that we must not make war safe for women—as a way to reflect on the inevitability of failure and the ostensible boundaries between theory and practice. The author takes permission from Zalewski's creative interventions and her recognition of the value of the ‘detritus of the everyday’—here a walk from New York's Grand Central Station to the UN Headquarters, musings on the flash of a particular shade of blue, and the contents of a footnoted acknowledgement, begin to trace an international political space that is produced through embodied and quotidian practice.

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Gender Analysis, Peace and Security, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS

Year: 2019

Citation:

Authors: Charlotte Wagnsson, Eva-Karin Olsson, Isabella Nilsen

Abstract:

Gender differences have been observed regarding many political and social issues, yet we lack comprehensive evidence on differences in perceptions on a wide range of security issues increasingly important to voters: military threats, criminality, and terrorism. Previous research suggests that when women are highly politically mobilized, as they are in Sweden, gender differences in political opinion are large. On the other hand, Swedish politicians have worked hard to reduce gender stereotypical thinking. This prompts the question: Are there gender differences in attitudes on security issues in Sweden, and if so, in what ways do the attitudes differ? This study is based on comprehensive data from focus groups and a large-scale survey. The results show that women were more prone to respond with an “ethic of care,” across security issues. Women were more inclined to understand security problems as structural, explained by macho culture, segregation, and injustice. Women tend to support preventive measures that provide individuals with opportunities to choose “the right path,” such as education and economic investment in deprived areas. When asked about national security, women believe more in diplomacy and dialogue. In general, women are less inclined to support various repressive solutions.

Keywords: crime, law & social control, politics/state/nationalism, violence, war & conflict

Topics: Gender, Gender Analysis, Gendered Discourses, Political Participation, Security Regions: Europe, Nordic states, Northern Europe Countries: Sweden

Year: 2020