Gender Analysis

How Resilient are Farming Households and Communities to a Changing Climate in Africa

Citation:

Perez, C., E.M. Jones, P. Kristjanson, L. Cramer,  P.K. Thornton, W. Förch, and C. Barahona. 2015. “How Resilient are Farming Households and Communities to a Changing Climate in Africa? A Gender-based Perspective.” Global Environmental Change 34: 95–107.

Authors: C. Perez, E.M. Jones, P. Kristjanson, L. Cramer, P.K. Thornton, W. Förch, C. Barahona

Abstract:

Social, economic and institutional factors and driving forces enhance or hinder the adaptation capacity of agricultural and pastoral households and communities. The effectiveness of the resulting adaptation strategies influences the nature and extent of the impact of multiple stresses and shocks, including climate change’s, at the local-level. Using a 9-country dataset from sub-Saharan Africa, and integrating quantitative household-level analyses with qualitative work, we show evidence that adaptation is connected to population growth, dependence on cash to cover essential needs, and limited sources of employment other than exploitation of natural resources and sale of crop produce and animals. In some countries, government policies like privatization of community forests, rangelands and riparian areas, the settlement of pastoralists, and the provision of subsidies for food or agricultural inputs reduce adaptation capacity. Policies take away the traditional decision-making and collective action powers that communities had to regulate the use and sustainable management of natural resources. Gender relations also affect agricultural practices and adaptation. The women farmers in our sample control less land than men, the land they control is often of poorer quality, and their tenure is insecure. Women, more than men, are dependent on internal village groups, as opposed to organizations operating at regional or national levels. Hence, women have less access to extension and input services, and are less likely than men to use improved seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides. The adaptive capacity of individuals and communities depends on their differential access to resources, economic assets and social capital, which are mediated by their socially defined rights and responsibilities. Highlights include:
• Vulnerability and adaptation to climate change depend on opportunities governed by the varied and complex interplay of social relations, institutions, organizations, and policies.
• Climate is one of many influences that affect the producers’ coping and adaptation strategies.
• Women and men incorporate a wide range of technology and production management adjustments.
• The producers’ most frequently cited reasons for adjustments include decrease in productivity, fluctuation in prices, market opportunities, and frequency of drought.
(Abstract from original source)

Keywords: climate, agriculture, adaptation, Surveys, gender

Topics: Agriculture, Gender, Gender Analysis, Security, Food Security Regions: Africa, Southern Africa

Year: 2015

Emasculating America’s Linguistic Deterrent

Citation:

Cohn, Carol. 2019. “Emasculating America’s Linguistic Deterrent.” In Rocking the Ship of State: Toward a Feminist Peace Politics, edited by Adrienne Harris and Ynestra King, 153–70. New York: Routledge.

Author: Carol Cohn

Annotation:

Excerpts:

“I have three primary objectives in this project. The first is to describe, analyze, and explore the effects of technostrategic discourse – the language and ways of thinking that defense intellectuals have developed to speak about nuclear weapons, strategy, and warfare” (Cohn 2019, 154).

“My second objective goes beyond describing and understanding this discourse. Stated in the strongest possible terms, I wish to render this discourse 'impotent and obsolete' (to borrow a phrase from Ronald Reagan). I wish to expose its limits and distortions, its underlying assumptions and values, and the vast gaps between what it claims to do and what it actually does, so as to break its stranglehold on our scholarship, our policy decisions, our national political processes, and our imaginations” (Cohn 2019, 155).

“My third objective is to foster the development of more truly realistic, effective, and humane ways of thinking about international security and cooperation” (Cohn 2019, 155).

Topics: Gender, Gender Analysis, Gendered Discourses, Masculinity/ies, Peace and Security, Political Participation, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Countries: United States of America

Year: 2019

‘Cocked and Loaded’: Trump and the Gendered Discourse of National Security

Citation:

Cohn, Carol. 2020. “‘Cocked and Loaded’: Trump and the Gendered Discourse of National Security.” In Language in the Trump Era: Scandals and Emergencies, edited by Janet McIntosh and Norma Mendoza-Denton, 179–90. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Author: Carol Cohn

Keywords: military language, North Korea, nuclear weapons, metaphor, euphemism, gender, masculinity, gender and language, national security, language and thought

Annotation:

Summary:

On Jan 2, 2018, President Trump tweeted a taunt to Kim Jong-un of North Korea: “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” This chapter connects Trump’s nuclear saber-rattling to broader patterns of militaristic language use among nuclear weapons scientists and strategists, as well as among past presidents. Professional and political discourse about nuclear weapons tends to be far removed from the human realities behind the weapons. Such dispassionate language is characterized by stunningly abstract and euphemistic language – and in part by a set of lively and misogynistic sexual metaphors. This linguistic framework seems to shape what can be said, or even thought, within the confines of these male-dominated discussions of war. Those who urge restraint in responding to a provocation or attack, for instance, are quickly impugned as sissies, and expressions of empathy denigrated as feminine. In this respect, Mr. Trump is not an exception. His fear of being perceived as unmanly may be closer to the surface, but gendered language that constrains our understanding of reality has long distorted the ways we think about international politics and national security. (Summary from publisher)

Topics: Gender, Femininity/ies, Gender Analysis, Gendered Discourses, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Countries: North Korea, United States of America

Year: 2020

The Dead, the Living, and the Sacred: Patsy Mink, Antimilitarism, and Reimagining the Pacific World

Citation:

Wu, Judy Tzu-Chun. 2019. “The Dead, the Living, and the Sacred: Patsy Mink, Antimilitarism, and Reimagining the Pacific World.” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 18 (2): 304–31.

Author: Judy Tzu-Chun Wu

Abstract:

This article focuses on the antinuclear and antimilitarism politics of Patsy Takemoto Mink (1927–2002), the first Japanese American female lawyer in Hawai'i, the first woman of color to become a U.S. congressional representative, and the namesake for Title IX. During the late 1960s and 1970s, Mink challenged the use of the Pacific lands, waters, and peoples as sites of military experimentation, subject to nuclear and chemical testing as well as war games. Mink's political worldview, shaped by her experiences and understanding of the interconnectedness between human and nonhuman life as well as water and land, reflected a Pacific World sensibility. She worked with, but also articulated political priorities that differed from, indigenous peoples of the Pacific. Focusing on these connected yet divergent Pacific imaginaries provides an opportunity to explore the significance of these antimilitarism campaigns for the study of transnational feminisms as well as Asian American and Pacific Islander studies. First, the protests of Mink and Native Hawaiian activists against U.S. militarism in the Pacific represented gendered critiques of U.S. empire, although in different ways. Second, Mink's advocacy via political liberalism provided opportunities for coalition formation yet also constrained the range of her gendered arguments and limited possible solutions beyond the U.S. polity. Third, the coalitional possibilities and incommensurabilities reveal the points of convergence and divergence between Asian American demands for full inclusion and Pacific Islander calls for decolonization and sovereignty. (Abstract from original source)

Keywords: Patsy Takemoto Mink, Cold War militarism, Pacific World, liberalism, settler colonialism

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Environment, Gender, Gender Analysis, Women, Livelihoods, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Political Participation, Rights, Human Rights, Indigenous Rights, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Regions: Oceania Countries: United States of America

Year: 2019

Australian Women’s Anti-Nuclear Leadership: The Framing of Peace and Social Change

Citation:

Maleta, Yulia. 2018. “Australian Women’s Anti-Nuclear Leadership: The Framing of Peace and Social Change.” Journal of International Women’s Studies 19 (6): 70–86.

Author: Yulia Maleta

Abstract:

This article addresses a gap on hegemonic masculinity/emphasized femininity and essentialism/constructivism within the Environmental New Social Movement (eNSM). Utilizing my interviews with Australian women members of environmentalist New Social Movement Organisations (eNSMOs), including eNGOs, academic institutions and the Greens party, I adopt a constructivist approach towards emphasized femininity, arguing that women-led strategies, strengthened through agentic competence contributes to global peace, whilst challenging the patriarchal control of environmental governance (Cockburn 1988, 2012). My feminist sociopolitical model is framed by resistance to ruling class masculinity, emphasizing participants’ gender performativity, advocating anti-nuclear agendas (Warren 1999, Gaard 2001, Butler 2013). Constructivism is relayed by the way women activists’ resist patriarchy as a barrier, in terms of ‘hierarchy’, ‘man-made decisions’ and ‘power…terrible nasty stuff’. Moreover, women accommodate emphasized femininity as an empowering enabler, framed by women-led strategies, described as ‘revolutionary’, ‘mother and child’, ‘social responsibility’ and ‘environmental protection’, whilst advocating sustainability (Leahy 2003, Connell 2005, Culley and Angelique 2010, Maleta 2012).

Keywords: emphasized femininity, women, constructivism, Anti-nuclear, sustainability

Topics: Environment, Feminisms, Gender, Femininity/ies, Gender Analysis, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Hierarchies, Patriarchy, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Countries: Australia, Guatemala

Year: 2018

Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy

Citation:

Acheson, Ray. 2021. Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy. Milton Keynes, UK: Rowman & Littlefield.

Author: Ray Acheson

Annotation:

Summary:

Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy offers a look inside the antinuclear movement and its recent successful campaign to ban the bomb. From scrappy organizing to winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 and achieving a landmark UN treaty banning nuclear weapons, this book narrates the journey of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and developments in feminist disarmament activism. Acheson explains the process through which diplomats, activists, and nuclear survivors worked together to elevate the horrific humanitarian and environmental impacts of nuclear weapons, develop new international law categorically prohibiting the bomb, challenge the nuclear orthodoxy, and strengthen norms for disarmament and peace. Told from the perspective of a queer feminist antimilitarist organizer who was involved from the start of the process through to the treaty’s adoption, the book utilizes interviews with dozens of participants, as well as critical theoretical perspectives about transnational advocacy networks, discourse change, and intersectional feminist action. It is meant to provide useful insights for anyone trying to make change amidst structures of power and politics. (Summary from publisher)

Topics: Environment, Feminisms, Gender, Gender Analysis, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, International Law, NGOs, Rights, Human Rights, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

Year: 2021

Disposable Waste, Lands and Bodies under Canada’s Gendered Nuclear Colonialism

Citation:

Runyan, Anne Sisson. 2018. “Disposable Waste, Lands and Bodies under Canada’s Gendered Nuclear Colonialism.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 20 (1): 24–38.

Author: Anne Sisson Runyan

Abstract:

Nuclear colonialism, or the exploitation of Indigenous lands and peoples to sustain the nuclear fuel cycle from uranium mining and refining to nuclear energy and weapons production and the dumping of the resulting nuclear waste, occurs in many parts of the world and has generated considerable protest. This article focuses on a contemporary and ongoing case of nuclear colonialism in Canada: attempts to site two national deep geological repositories (DGRs) for nuclear waste on traditional First Nations land in Southwestern Ontario near the world’s largest operational nuclear power plant. Through histories of the rise of nuclear power and nuclear waste policy-making and their relationship to settler colonialism in Canada, as well as actions taken by the Saugeen Ojibway Nation (SON) and white settler antinuclear waste movements, the article explores how gender is at work in nuclear colonialism and anti-nuclear waste struggles. Gender is explored here in terms of the patriarchal nuclear imperative, the appropriation of Aboriginal land through undermining Aboriginal women’s status and the problematic relationship between First Nations and white settler women-led movements in resistance to nuclear waste burial from a feminist decolonial perspective.

Keywords: nuclear waste, gendered nuclear colonialism, white settler colonialism, patriarchal nuclear imperative, Canada

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Environment, Feminisms, Gender, Gender Analysis, Indigenous, Rights, Indigenous Rights, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Regions: Americas, North America Countries: Canada

Year: 2018

The United States–India Nuclear Relations after 9/11: Alternative Discourses

Citation:

Das, Runa. 2012. “The United States–India Nuclear Relations after 9/11: Alternative Discourses.” Asian Journal of Political Science 20 (1): 86–107.

Author: Runa Das

Abstract:

In this article, I go beyond the conventional realist arguments of anarchy, national interest, and nuclear security to offer alternative discourses of the same as applied in the context of US–India nuclear relations after 9/11. To this extent, I draw from feminist International Relations, that security is a gendered phenomenon, to explore how the post-9/11 climate of globalization has served as the context within which are articulated masculinist forms of nuclear discourses between India and the United States. Furthermore, considering issues of international hierarchy and power relations between India and United States, I also draw from Edward Said's Orientalism to explore how assumptions of Orientalism are also sustained in these masculinist nuclear discourses. My contribution in this article lies in offering an alternative feminist and post-colonial perspective to comprehend that nuclear security discourses are not only about objective realist/neoliberal issues of insecurity and strategic interdependence but also contain subjective implications that sustain masculinist and orientalist forms of identity-making in international politics.

Keywords: United States, India, nuclear security, masculinity, orientalism, discourse

Topics: Gender, Gender Analysis, Gendered Discourses, Masculinity/ies, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Countries: India, United States of America

Year: 2012

More Bang for Your Buck: Nuclear Weapons and Their Enactment of Colonial and Gendered Power

Citation:

Urwin, Jessica A. 2016. “More Bang for Your Buck: Nuclear Weapons and Their Enactment of Colonial and Gendered Power.” ANU Undergraduate Research Journal, no. 8.

Author: Jessica A. Urwin

Abstract:

Analysing the nuclear weapons regime through both postcolonial and feminist frameworks demonstrates that the possession of nuclear weapons has incredibly important implications for the security agenda. While both postcolonial and feminist scholars have delved into the relationships between their respective disciplines and the dynamics of the nuclear weapons regime, gaps in the scholarship ensure that postcolonial feminist critiques of the regime are lacking. This article endeavours to combine postcolonial and feminist critiques to demonstrate how the nuclear weapons regime is underpinned by pertinent gendered and colonial assumptions. These assumptions ensure that certain states are prioritised over others; namely, the behaviour of nuclear weapons states is considered more legitimate than that of ‘rogue states’, their desire for nuclear weapons hinged upon racial, colonial and gendered assumptions of legitimacy. Closely analysing the gendered and colonial dynamics of the nuclear weapons regime sheds light upon how patriarchy and imperialism have shaped the security agenda in regard to nuclear weapons.

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Femininity/ies, Gender Analysis, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Peace and Security, Security, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Countries: India, Pakistan, United States of America

Year: 2016

Radioactive Masculinity: How the Anxious Postcolonial Learnt to Love and Live in Fear of the Nuclear Bomb

Citation:

Roy, Dibyadyuti. 2016. “Radioactive Masculinity: How the Anxious Postcolonial Learnt to Love and Live in Fear of the Nuclear Bomb.” PhD diss., West Virginia University.

Author: Dibyadyuti Roy

Abstract:

Radioactive Masculinity explores how the Cold War legacy, of nuclear weapons finding resonance in images of white maleness and masculinity, results in anxious hypermasculine performances. These discursive and physical masculine acts contingent on the symbolic and material power of nuclear weapons, I argue, represent radioactive masculinity, a form of hegemonic militarized masculinity, which is intrinsically linked to the concept of nationhood and sovereignty. This idealized masculinity is fluid and cannot be tangibly or materially realized, much like the constantly decaying radioactive bomb on which it is modeled. Through analyzing a wide range of artifacts from America and India, I show that the anxieties of radioactive masculinity produce belligerent masculine performances, which are always volatile and unsuccessful. While existent scholarship has examined the gendered nature of nuclear technology, the cultural effect of unexploded nuclear weapons has been seldom researched. My project remedies this gap by locating physical and cultural sites in America and India, where the materiality of the bomb is made visible through its associations with male corporeality. This relationship, I argue, is indispensable toward understanding both the continued legacy of the Cold War within the Indian subcontinent, as well as its effects on postcolonial subjectivities.

The dissertation begins with an introductory chapter that chronicles the rise of radioactive masculinity within the American military-industrial complex. Here, I analyze official US government documents and related materials, which perform the equation of the bomb to the hardened white male body. I show that while nuclear technology is not inherently gendered, both the bomb and its production spaces were pre-discursively masculinized in order to counter dual insecurities: of post-Depression era American emasculation and a hypermasculine Nazi Germany. Next, I bring in a comparison to Indian governmental documents to further describe how the transference of American radioactive masculinity into postcolonial spaces creates postcolonial nuclear borderlands, which are co-extensive with all nuclear postcolonial spaces everywhere. Chapter 2 examines the formation of a (pseudo) nuclear public sphere in America— resulting from the crisis in official publicity about the bombin the period following the cessation of above ground testing. By juxtaposing canonical Anglo-American nuclear disaster fiction with postcolonial speculative fiction, Chapters 3 and 4 emphasize that the structures of radioactive masculinity are fluid and not bound to specific spatio-temporal contexts. In Chapter 5, a comparative analysis of Leslie Silko’s Ceremony with postcolonial Indian texts from the eco-conservationist Bishnoi community demonstrate how tactical storytelling challenges the strategic structures of radioactive colonization. My dissertation concludes with an examination of minority anti-nuclear cultural productions, which by challenging the ideology of nuclear nationalism implicit in radioactive masculinity, deconstructs dominant Anglo-American nuclear historiography. By challenging the symbiotic relationship between radioactive masculinity and nuclear nationalism these texts initiate Nucliteracya dynamic multimodal form of literacythat interrogates dominant and official publicity/secrecy about the bomb. (Abstract from original source)

 

Keywords: radioactive, postcolonial, nuclear bomb, masculinity, gender, post-apocalyptic

Topics: Gender, Gender Analysis, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Weapons /Arms, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Countries: India, United States of America

Year: 2016

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