Gendered Discourses

Gendering Resilience: Myths and Stereotypes in the Discourse on Climate-Induced Migration

Citation:

Rothe, Delf. 2017. "Gendering Resilience: Myths and Stereotypes in the Discourse on Climate-Induced Migration." Global Policy 8 (1): 40-7.

Author: Delf Rothe

Abstract:

The research article critically investigates recent European policy proposals that promote migration as an adaptation strategy to increase the resilience of communities vulnerable to the environmental crisis. Such proposals have been welcomed for breaking with alarmist discourses that framed climate-induced migration as a threat to national or international security. The present article seeks to contribute to this ongoing debate by bringing in a fresh perspective that has so far been neglected: the perspective of gender. Drawing on a poststructuralist perspective on gender the article reveals that policy debates on climate-induced migration take place within highly gendered discourses. Applying this perspective to recent policy reports on climate change, migration and resilience, the article helps to paint a more nuanced picture of the highly criticized notion of resilience. The analysis shows that, on the one hand, resilience thinking helped overcoming a masculinized discourse of security as control. On the other hand, it reproduces a series of ‘gender myths’ about the role of women in the so-called Global South.

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Climate Displacement, Migration, Environment, Climate Change, Environmental Disasters, Gender, Gendered Discourses

Year: 2017

Curious Erasures: The Sexual in Wartime Sexual Violence

Citation:

Baaz, Maria Eriksson, and Maria Stern. 2018. “Curious Erasures: The Sexual in Wartime Sexual Violence.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 20 (3): 295-314.

Authors: Maria Eriksson Baaz, Maria Stern

Abstract:

Wartime sexual violence is especially egregious precisely because it is a sexual form of violence that causes particular harms. Yet, curiously, and in contrast to feminist theory on sexual violence more generally, the sexual has been erased from frames of understanding in dominant accounts of wartime rape. This article places the seeming certainty that “wartime rape is not about sex (it’s about power/violence)” under critical scrutiny and poses questions about the stakes of the erasure of the sexual in explanations of conflict-related sexual violence. It argues that the particular urgency that accompanies this erasure reflects the workings of familiar distinctions between war and peace, as well as efforts to clearly recognize violence and separate it from sex. Erasing the sexual from accounts of wartime rape thus ultimately reinscribes the normal and the exceptional as separate and reproduces a reductive notion of heterosexual masculine sex (in peacetime) that is ontologically different from the violence of war.

Keywords: sexual violence, wartime, peacetime, rape, feminist theory, sexuality

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Gendered Discourses, Sexual Violence, Rape, Sexuality, Violence

Year: 2018

Suffering for Water, Suffering from Water: Emotional Geographies of Resource Access, Control and Conflict

Citation:

Sultana, Farhana. 2011. "Suffering for Water, Suffering from Water: Emotional Geographies of Resource Access, Control and Conflict." Geoforum 42 (2): 163-72. 

Author: Farhana Sultana

Abstract:

This article argues that resource access, use, control, ownership and conflict are not only mediated through social relations of power, but also through emotional geographies where gendered subjectivities and embodied emotions constitute how nature–society relations are lived and experienced on a daily basis. By engaging the insights from feminist political ecology literatures and emotional geographies literatures, the article demonstrates that resource struggles and conflicts are not just material challenges but emotional ones, which are mediated through bodies, spaces and emotions. Such a focus fleshes out the complexities, entanglements and messy relations that constitute political ecologies of resources management, where practices and processes are negotiated through constructions of gender, embodiments, and emotions. Abstractions of ‘resource struggles’ and ‘resource conflicts’ are thereby grounded in embodied emotional geographies of places, peoples, and resources, enabling us to better understand the ways resources and emotions come to matter in everyday survival struggles. This framing can enrich feminist political ecology theorizations and texture our understandings of commonly used terms such as access, use, control, conflict and struggles vis-à-vis natural resources in any context. In other words, we are better able to conceptualize and explain how and why people access, use, and struggle over resources the ways they do. A case study of drinking water contamination from Bangladesh is used to develop the theoretical arguments in contributing to existing debates in (feminist) political ecologies.

Keywords: political ecology, emotional geography, resource access, conflict, Gender, water, Bangladesh

Topics: Conflict, Environment, Feminisms, Feminist Political Ecology, Gender, Women, Gender Analysis, Gendered Discourses, Gendered Power Relations, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation, Political Economies Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Bangladesh

Year: 2011

Rural Women in Sri Lanka's Post-Conflict Rural Economy

Citation:

Wanasundera, Leelangi. 2006. Rural Women in Sri Lanka’s Post-Conflict Rural Economy. Bangkok: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Author: Leelangi Wanasundera

Annotation:

Summary
"The major objective of this review was to assess rural women’s situation in reconstruction and rehabilitation of agriculture and the rural economy in areas emerging from armed conflict. The purpose is to ensure that gender issues are incorporated and that reconstruction and rehabilitation processes do not bypass women. The review focuses on the Northern and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka and certain areas of North Central districts and Uva provinces that border the North and East. The primary focus is on the North East province that bore the brunt of the armed conflict for almost two decades" (Wanasundera 2006, 33).
 
Table of Contents:
1. Livelihood and poverty conditions in the conflict region
 
2. Rural women and livelihood activities
 
3. Social realities of rural women in the conflict region
 
4. Rehabilitation of agriculture and the rural sector in the North East
 
5. Implementation and performance for gender responsive rehabilitation 
 
6. Rural women's access to resources and assets in the conflict region
 
7. Conclusion and Recommendations
 

Topics: Agriculture, Civil Wars, Economies, Gender, Women, Gender Analysis, Gendered Discourses, Gender Mainstreaming, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Governance, Post-Conflict Governance, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation, International Organizations, Livelihoods, Political Participation, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: Sri Lanka

Year: 2006

The Praxis of Access: Gender in Myanmar’s National Land Use Policy

Citation:

Faxon, Hilary Oliva. 2015. “The Praxis of Access: Gender in Myanmar’s National Land Use Policy.” Paper presented at the Conference on Land Grabbing, Conflict and Agrarian‐Environmental Transformations: Perspectives from East and Southeast Asia, Chaing Mai University, June 5-6. 

Author: Hilary Olivia Faxon

Abstract:

In Myanmar, heated struggles around land grabs, acquisition, and formalization fail to acknowledge the complexity and heterogeneity of existing land relations. Gender dynamics are key to shaping these systems, and have been neglected in current research and policy. This paper examines women’s access to land and the emergence of gender discourse in land policy debates through a participant ethnography of the National Land Use Policy consultation process. I explore both ways in which land access is lived by rural women, and feminist contributions to land-based social movements. Attention to the differentiated yet interlinked spheres of the household, customary law, and land formalization enhances understanding of land politics, and women’s presence, gender concerns, and the nascent common identity of the pan-Myanmar women can catalyze effective advocacy for just land reform in Myanmar.

Topics: Development, Feminisms, Gender, Gendered Discourses, Households, Land Grabbing, Rights, Land Rights, Property Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: Myanmar

Year: 2015

Women Reclaiming Sustainable Livelihoods: Spaces Lost, Spaces Gained

Citation:

Harcourt, Wendy, ed. 2012. Women Reclaiming Sustainable Livelihoods: Spaces Lost, Spaces Gained. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Author: Wendy Harcourt

Abstract:

Annotation:

Summary: 
This volume highlights women's work sustaining local economies and environments, particularly in response to the current food, fuel and climate crises. It includes women's role in the green entrepreneurship, women's reproductive and productive work in the care economy, and a further examination of eco feminist debates. (Summary from Palgrave Macmillan)
 
Table of Contents:
1. Redefining Sustainable Livelihoods 
Sumi Krishna
 
2. Women Advocating for Sustainable Livelihoods and Gender Equality on the Global Stage
Irene Dankelman
 
3. Towards Gender Equality in Global Sustainable Consumption and Production Agreements 
Kathleen Sexsmith
 
4. Gender Equality in Certified Agricultural Value Chains 
Noortje Verhart and Rhiannon Pyburn 
 
5. Global Agricultural Policies, Institutional Interventions, and Women's Livelihoods 
Rao Aruna 
 
6. Global Institutions Try to Get it Right: An Insiders Perspective 
Gretchen Bloom
 
7. Your Caring Sharing Co-op: Women, Work and Sustainability in a Polanyian Paradigm
Molly Scott Cato
 
8. Gender and Sustainable Livelihoods in India: 'Side Stream'/'Mainstream'
Sumi Krishna 
 
9. The Dream Merchants Have No Clothes: Women's Rights and Empowerment in the Microfinance Regime 
Soma Kishore Parthasarathy 
 
10. The Cost of Peace: Exploring Opportunities for Women's Livelihoods in Post-Conflict Settings 
Sabrina Aguiari
 
11. Sustaining Women's and Community Livelihoods in Rural Tanzania 
Mwajuma Masaiganah
 
12. Sustainable Livelihoods and Gender in the Marginal Alpine Communities of Trentino
Micdiela Zucca
 
13. Indigenous Women Claiming Their Land 
Marisa Belausteguigoitia Rius
 
14. Biocapital, Biopolitics and Biosocialities: Reframing Health, Livelihoods and Environments with New Genetics and Biotechnology
Liliana Acero
 
15. Gender and Sustainable Livelihoods in Urban Honiara
Anita Lacey
 
16. Gender and Climate Justice 
Ana Agostino and Rosa Lizarde
 
17. Epilogue: Green-Washing Warnings 
Wendy Harcourt

Topics: Agriculture, Economies, Care Economies, Environment, Gender, Gender Analysis, Gender Roles, Gendered Discourses, Indigenous, Livelihoods, Rights, Land Rights

Year: 2012

Gendered Discourse About Climate Change Policies

Citation:

Swim, Janet K., Theresa K. Vescio, Julia L. Dahl, and Stephanie J. Zawadzki. 2018. “Gendered Discourse About Climate Change Policies.” Global Environmental Change 48: 216–25.

Authors: Janet K. Swim, Theresa K. Vescio, Julia L. Dahl, Stephanie J. Zawadzki

Abstract:

Extending theory and research on gender roles and masculinity, this work predicts and finds that common ways of talking about climate change are gendered. Climate change policy arguments that focus on science and business are attributed to men more than to women. By contrast, policy arguments that focus on ethics and environmental justice are attributed to women more than men (Study 1). Men show gender matching tendencies, being more likely to select (Study 2) and positively evaluate (Study 3) arguments related to science and business than ethics and environmental justice. Men also tend to attribute negative feminine traits to other men who use ethics and environmental justice arguments, which mediates the relation between type of argument and men’s evaluation of the argument (Study 3). The gendered nature of public discourse about climate change and the need to represent ethical and environmental justice topics in this discourse are discussed.

Keywords: Gender, climate change, political discourse, masculinity, environmental justice

Topics: Environment, Climate Change, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender Roles, Gendered Discourses, Justice

Year: 2018

Contemporarity: Sufficiency in a Radical African Feminist Life

Citation:

McFadden, Patricia. 2018. "Contemporarity: Sufficiency in a Radical African Feminist Life." Meridians 17 (2): 415-31.

Author: Patricia McFadden

Abstract:

This essay theorizes contemporarity as a new framework for Black feminist resistances—personal and sociopolitical—and explores reimagined lived realities as a crucial site for the generation of new feminist epistemologies and alternative ways of living. Given the failures of neocolonial and neoliberal state regimes across the African continent and the globe to respond equitably to the imperatives of human emancipation, the paper argues for a return to and closer interrogation of personal politics and feminist relationships to the self and the ecosystems that nurture both. The challenge is to find new sources of creative imaginaries and resistance that will lead to the unfolding of discourses, practices, and ways of living that offer an alternative to neoliberal capitalism. From the experience of sustaining oneself through ecological balance, a respectful interaction with nature, and nonmarket practices of sufficiency, the paper proposes to glean the knowledge and inherent integrity embedded in such processes to create new radical social knowledge and practices.

Keywords: contemporarity, alternatives, sufficiency, nature, vegan

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Environment, Gender, Women, Gender Analysis, Femininity/ies, Gendered Discourses, Gender Mainstreaming, Race Regions: Africa

Year: 2018

Gender Justice: "Gender" in the Bangsamoro Development Plan

Citation:

Jopson, Teresa Lorena. 2017. “Gender Justice: ‘Gender’ in the Bangsamoro Development Plan.” In Enlarging the Scope of Peace Psychology: African and World-Regional Contributions, edited by Mohamed Seedat, Shahnaaz Suffla, and Daniel J. Christie, 221–38. Cham: Springer.

Author: Teresa Lorena Jopson

Abstract:

This chapter is a preliminary inquiry into gender, conflict, and peace in Mindanao, Southern Philippines. I look into the role of gender in the conflict, women’s participation in peace negotiations, and gender equality as a component of peace and development. I suggest that gender inequality, in the form of a gender order, has historically shaped conflict in Mindanao. I review women’s participation in peace negotiations in Southeast Asia through the cases of Aceh, Myanmar, and the Philippines. Finally, using critical frame analysis, I look at how gender has been framed in the Bangsamoro Development Plan, a roadmap for sustainable peace of the proposed Bangsamoro government. I find that the gender order has shaped the roles men and women have taken in Bangsamoro history and that women’s participation does not necessarily translate to having gender on the agenda of peace negotiations. I underscore the relevance of increased women’s participation in peace and development processes and critically framing gender on peace agendas. I maintain that attending to the quality of gender discourse by (re)politicising “gender” to bring back its emancipatory aim is an aspect of a sustainable peace. 

Keywords: Peace Negotiations, Gender, development, bangsamoro, Philippines

Topics: Conflict, Development, Gender, Women, Men, Gendered Discourses, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Governance, Post-Conflict Governance, Peacebuilding, Peace Processes Regions: Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: Philippines

Year: 2017

You Just Don’t Understand: Troubled Engagements Between Feminists and IR Theorists

Citation:

Tickner, J. Ann. 1997. “You Just Don’t Understand: Troubled Engagements Between Feminists and IR Theorists.” International Studies Quarterly 41 (4): 611–32.

Author: J. Ann Tickner

Abstract:

This article reconstructs some conversational encounters between feminists and IR theorists and offers some hypotheses as to why misunderstandings so frequently result from these encounters. It claims that contemporary feminist perspectives on international relations are based on ontologies and epistemologies that are quite different from those that inform the conventional discipline. Therefore, they do not fit comfortably within conventional state-centric and structural approaches to IR theorizing, nor with the methodologies usually employed by IR scholars. As an illustration of how these differences can cause misunderstandings, the article offers some feminist perspectives on security, a concept central to the discipline. It also suggests how feminist approaches can offer some new ways to understand contemporary security problems. In conclusion, it suggests how feminist/IR engagements might be pursued more constructively.

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Gendered Discourses, Security

Year: 1997

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