Livelihoods

Gardening Matters: a Political Ecology of Female Horticulturists, Commercialization, Water Access, and Food Security in Botswana

Citation:

Fehr, Rachel, and William G. Moseley. 2017. “Gardening Matters: a Political Ecology of Female Horticulturists, Commercialization, Water Access, and Food Security in Botswana.” African Geographical Review 38 (1): 67-80.

Authors: Rachel Fehr, William G. Moseley

Abstract:

The Government of Botswana and its partners have sought to address household food insecurity and poverty by experimenting with gardening initiatives of various sizes and commercial orientation. We use a multi-method approach, incorporating both econometric analysis and qualitative data, viewed through the theoretical lens of feminist political ecology, to determine how effective these women’s gardening initiatives are in addressing household food insecurity. We compare the relationship between commercial orientation and food security for women who rely on borehole water, tap water, and river water. We find that food security status improves with commercial orientation only when women are already experienced with the commercial market and/or when commercialization helps cover unavoidable water costs. When women have access to a reliable source of inexpensive water (as the river water users do), they can sustainably pursue subsistence-oriented horticulture and may in fact see greater food security benefits from consuming what they grow than from selling it. This study’s results call into question claims that commercialized horticulture will improve food security without first addressing the gendered dynamics of water access.

Keywords: commercial agriculture, feminist political ecology, food security, horticulture, water access, Botswana

Annotation:


 

Topics: Economies, Poverty, Feminisms, Feminist Political Ecology, Gender, Women, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation, Livelihoods, Security, Food Security Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: Botswana

Year: 2017

Water Worries: an Intersectional Feminist Political Ecology of Tourism and Water in Labuan Bajo, Indonesia

Citation:

Cole, Stroma. 2017. “Water Worries: an Intersectional Feminist Political Ecology of Tourism and Water in Labuan Bajo, Indonesia.” Annals of Tourism Research 67: 14-24.

Author: Stroma Cole

Abstract:

Framed in feminist political ecology, this paper presents an intersectional analysis of the gender-water-tourism nexus. Based in an emergent tourism destination, Labuan Bajo, Indonesia, it goes beyond an analysis of how women bear the brunt of burdens related to water scarcity, and examines which women and why and how it affects their daily lives. Based on ethnographic research and speaking to over 100 respondents, the analysis unpicks how patriarchal cultural norms, ethnicity, socio-economic status, life-stage and proximity to water sources are intertwined to (re)produce gendered power relations. While there is heterogeneity of lived experiences, in the most part tourism is out competing locals for access to water leading to women suffering in multiple ways.

Keywords: Gender, water, Indonesia, intersectionality, patriarchy

Topics: Environment, Ethnicity, Feminisms, Feminist Political Ecology, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation, Intersectionality, Livelihoods Regions: Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: Indonesia

Year: 2017

Feminist Political Ecology and Rural Women-Led Cooperatives in Hidalgo, Mexico

Citation:

Alarcón, Jozelin María Soto, Diana Xóchitl González Gómez, Eduardo Rodríguez Juárez, and Angélica María Vázquez Rojas. 2020. “Feminist Political Ecology and Rural Women-Led Cooperatives in Hidalgo, Mexico.” Textual (75): 131-55.

Authors: Jozelin María Soto Alarcón, Diana Xóchitl González Gómez, Eduardo Rodríguez Juárez, Angélica María Vázquez Rojas

Abstract:

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: 
This study analyzes through feminist political ecology approach the gender strategies enacted by two peasant and indigenous rural women-led cooperatives in Hidalgo Mexico, to access and manage natural resources intersected by ethnicity and training. With a long-term longitudinal study, the interdependence between cooperative organization and climate change processes are explored. Time poverty, gender restriction for rural women, collective strategies to create productive autonomous space and identify stakeholders’ co-responsibility, are discussed. The cooperatives efforts in climate change processes in critical environments are highlighted by the approach.

 

SPANISH ABSTRACT: 
El  artículo  analiza  desde  la  ecología  política  feminista  las  estrategias  de  género  implementadas   por   dos   cooperativas   dirigidas   por   mujeres   campesinas   e   indígenas   en   Hidalgo,   México,   para   acceder   y   controlar   recursos   naturales,   intersectados  por  la  etnia  y  la  capacitación.  Mediante  un  estudio  longitudinal  de  largo plazo, se explora la interdependencia entre la organización cooperativa y los procesos de cambio ambiental encabezados por las socias. Se discute el tiempo de pobreza, las restricciones de género para mujeres rurales, las estrategias colectivas para construir espacios autónomos de producción e identifica la corresponsabilidad de actores involucrados. El enfoque destaca el papel de las cooperativas en procesos de cambio ecológico en entornos ambientales críticos.

Keywords: gender, environmental preservation, time poverty

Topics: Environment, Climate Change, Feminisms, Feminist Political Ecology, Gender, Women, Indigenous, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Livelihoods Regions: Americas, Central America Countries: Mexico

Year: 2020

Gender and the Urban Commons in India: An Overview of Scientific Literature and the Relevance of a Feminist Political Ecology Perspective

Citation:

Rao, Manisha. 2020. “Gender and the Urban Commons in India: An Overview of Scientific Literature and the Relevance of a Feminist Political Ecology Perspective.” International Quarterly for Asian Studies 51 (1-2): 261-76.

Author: Manisha Rao

Abstract:

Traditionally, the concept of the commons implied a rural commons, an area of common usage for agricultural or pastoral purposes. As increasing numbers of people migrate to cities, however, sociological studies have focused on urban issues, of which the urban commons is one area of emerging research. In crowded, underdeveloped cities, residents must often rely on these shared public areas for their livelihoods or basic needs. This paper provides an overview of the literature on the urban commons in India, illustrating the relevance of a feminist political ecology perspective to sharpen its critical edge. The article begins with an overview of the commons debate and then moves on to analyse the question of the urban commons. After mapping the research on the urban commons in India, it analyses the issue of the urban commons within the context of the gender and environment debate that emerged in the 1980s. This is followed by alternative conceptualisations of gender and the environment as put forward by feminists in the Global South. Finally, a plea is made to engage in the study of the urban commons through the lens of feminist political ecology.

Keywords: India, urban commons, Gender, literature, feminist political ecology

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Migration, Feminisms, Feminist Political Ecology, Gender, Livelihoods Regions: Asia, South Asia Countries: India

Year: 2020

Legal Minors and Social Children: Rural African Women and Taxation in the Transkei, South Africa

Citation:

Redding, Sean. 1993. “Legal Minors and Social Children: Rural African Women and Taxation in the Transkei, South Africa.” African Studies Review  36 (3): 49-74. 

Author: Sean Redding

Annotation:

Summary:
Although the South African state officially collected taxes only from African men, taxes had a number of effects on African women as well. This paper contends that the first tax instituted, the hut tax, although it did little to change women's social, cultural and economic status by itself, did set a precedent for treating African women as legal minors. Later taxes combined with the development of migrant labor and the declining availability of arable land in the reserves to restructure women's roles dramatically. Taxes were by no means the only or the primary cause of this restructuring, but they were an integral part of the foundation. 
 
It is important to consider the effects of taxes on women, particularly rural women, for two reasons. First, what little secondary literature exists on the taxation of the African population concentrates on how taxes affected the supply of male migratory labor (Ramdhani 1986; Cooper 1981, 307; Marks 1970, 15, 132-3). While this is a crucial question, it tends to link taxes to labor migration solely as cause and effect while ignoring the more complex social consequences of taxes. Some of these consequences were long-term as they played themselves out in people's self-definitions, especially with regard to gender and social roles.
 
Second, a study of tax regulations and tax collection can provide a mirror in which are reflected the attitudes, assumptions and priorities of state officials dealing with the “Native Problem.” The imposition of the hut tax in the early years of the takeover of African societies revealed a particular view of how those societies were constructed and how white officials thought they ought to be altered. (Summary from Cambridge University Press)

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Migration, Economies, Public Finance, Ethnicity, Gender, Women, Men, Livelihoods Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: South Africa

Year: 1993

The Effect of Taxation on the Hours Worked by Married Women

Citation:

Leuthold, Jane H. 1978. “The Effect of Taxation on the Hours Worked by Married Women.” ILR Review 31 (4): 520-6.

Author: Jane H. Leuthold

Annotation:

Summary:
"Most studies of the effect of taxation on labor supply have focused on prime- age males, finding generally that the labor supply function is wage inelastic or slightly backward bending.' The implication is that tax increases have a zero (or small positive) effect on the labor supply. With the rapidly growing number of females in the labor force, however, it is becoming increasingly inappropriate to judge the effect of taxation on the labor supply on the basis of the male labor supply alone. Accordingly, this study will examine the effect of taxation on the labor supply of working women.
 
This study examines the effect of taxation on the labor supply of married working women, an increasingly important group in the labor force. Using NLS data from 1967, 1969, and 1971 and weighted multiple regression analysis to relate desired number of hours of work to both substitution and income tax effects and to various demographic variables, the author finds that increases in taxes have a negative effect on female labor supply. She concludes, further- more, that although black and white working women respond in approximately the same manner-the presence of preschool children reduces the number of hours worked and husband's approval of working in- creases the number of hours worked, for example- home ownership, health, and years of schooling completed have a stronger influence on black women" (Leuthold 1978, 520).

Topics: Economies, Public Finance, Gender, Women, Livelihoods, Race

Year: 1978

Wounds: Militarized Nursing, Feminist Curiosity, and Unending War

Citation:

Enloe, Cynthia. 2019. "Wounds: Militarized Nursing, Feminist Curiosity, and Unending War." International Relations 33 (3): 393-412.

Author: Cynthia Enloe

Abstract:

Taking wartime nurses – and post-war nursing – seriously makes one think more politically about the wounds endured in wartime and what counts as a wartime ‘wound’. Thinking about wounds and the wounded, in turn, reveals how war-waging officials, and militarizers more generally, have tried in the past, and today still try, to shrink citizens’ awareness of militarism’s negative consequences. Nursing, nurses, wounds, and the wounded each continues to be gendered, influencing the workings of both masculinities and femininities in past and current wartimes and post-war politics. Feminist analysts have expanded the ‘political’ and multiplied ‘political thinkers’. Failing to absorb these feminist theoretical insights fosters the trivialization of nurses and other caretakers of the wartime wounded and their diverse political thinking. It is a failing with serious implications. Overlooking nurses and others who provide wartime care, combined with a lack of curiosity about wounds, perpetuates militarization and war.
 

Keywords: masculinities, militarization, nurses, post-war, war, women, wounds

Topics: Armed Conflict, Feminisms, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Femininity/ies, Health, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Militarization, Livelihoods, Post-Conflict

Year: 2019

Male-Female Wage Differential in the West Bank: A Gender-Based Analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Citation:

Loewenthal, Amit, and Sami H. Miaari. 2020. "Male-Female Wage Differential in the West Bank: A Gender-Based Analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict." Defence and Peace Economics. doi:10.1080/10242694.2020.1768340.

Authors: Amit Loewenthal, Sami H. Miaari

Abstract:

This paper studies the gender wage differential in the Palestinian labor market of the West Bank before, during, and in the aftermath of the second Intifada. We combine data on the Palestinian labor force, politically motivated fatalities of Palestinians, and movement restrictions in the West Bank, in order to quantify the effect of political violence on the gender wage gap. We find that political violence during the second Intifada decreased the gender wage gap. We also observe a long-term trend of more women entering the labor force, especially in middle-income occupations where there is an existing large share of female employees. Political violence did not seem to reverse or hurt that trend. We provide suggestive evidence that the reduction in the wage gap is due to the increased supply of low-skilled men, who previously worked in Israel and entered the local labor market due to the Intifada.

Keywords: conflict, Gender, wage gap, Intifada, palestine

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Livelihoods, Violence Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Palestine / Occupied Palestinian Territories

Year: 2020

"Now We Have Equality": A Feminist Political Ecology Analysis of Carbon Markets in Oaxaca, Mexico

Citation:

Gay-Antaki, Miriam. 2016. “‘Now We Have Equality’: A Feminist Political Ecology Analysis of Carbon Markets in Oaxaca, Mexico.” Journal of Latin American Geography 15 (3): 49-66.

Author: Miriam Gay-Antaki

Abstract:

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: 

Carbon projects follow a neoliberal logic that stresses that nature is best conserved via market mechanisms. Studies and experiences of the impacts of development projects on communities and feminist political ecologies suggest that women, the elderly, the young, the poor, and the indigenous often perceive projects differently, benefit and lose in different ways, or shape the projects on the ground to fit their needs. Carbon projects have differentiated impacts within a community especially on the poor, women, and ecology; however, these differences do not tend to be the main focus of scholarship. The research presented here focuses on the effects of a wind project and a small scale reforestation project and the convergence of environment, gender and development as these are introduced into communities in Oaxaca, Mexico. This paper expands on carbon offset literature in Mexico by looking at the differential impacts of technologies on geographies and people with specific attention to gender. I find that there are important gendered differences between the wind and the forest projects, and suggest that a Feminist Political Ecology perspective is a necessary, though infrequently employed, lens through which to understand the impacts of carbon markets.

SPANISH ABSTRACT: 

Los proyectos de carbono siguen una lógica neoliberal que mantiene que la mejor manera de conservar a la naturaleza es a través de mecanismos de mercado. Estudios y experiencias de los impactos de proyectos de desarrollo en las comunidades y ecologías políticas feministas sugieren que las mujeres, los ancianos, los jóvenes, los pobres y los indígenas a menudo perciben los proyectos de manera diferente, ganan ó pierden de manera diferente, o adaptan los proyectos para satisfacer a sus necesidades. Se ha documentado que los proyectos de carbono tienen impactos diferenciados dentro de comunidades, especialmente sobre los pobres, las mujeres, y la ecología; Sin embargo, estas diferencias no tienden a ser el foco principal. La investigación que se presenta aquí se centra en un mega proyecto eólico y dos proyectos de reforestación de pequeña escala y se enfoca en la convergencia del medio ambiente, de género y desarrollo, al ser introducidos en las comunidades de Oaxaca, México. Este trabajo busca expandir la literatura sobre los mercados de carbono en México con un enfoque en los impactos diferenciales de las tecnologías, la geografía y en las personas con atención especial al género. Encuentro que hay diferencias de género importantes entre: los proyectos forestales y el de viento y, si están bajo un esquema de Mecanismo de Desarrollo Limpio o un mecanismo voluntario, la escala del proyecto y el grado en el que está involucrada la comunidad.

Keywords: carbon projects, feminist political ecology, Oaxaca

Topics: Age, Environment, Feminisms, Feminist Political Ecology, Gender, Women, Livelihoods Regions: Americas, North America Countries: Mexico

Year: 2016

If Another World is Possible, Who is Doing the Imagining? Building an Ecofeminist Development Alternative in a Time of Deep Systemic Crisis

Citation:

Mapondera, Margaret, Trusha Reddy, and Samantha Hargreaves. 2020. If Another World is Possible, Who is Doing the Imagining? Building an Ecofeminist Development Alternative in a Time of Deep Systemic Crisis. The Bread & Butter Series 6. African Women's Development Fund. 

Authors: Margaret Mapondera, Trusha Reddy, Samantha Hargreaves

Abstract:

This article discusses the ecological and climate crisis, as a critical dimension of the manifold threats facing the planet and most of its peoples today. We locate the crises in an economic system founded on production for profit which places nature in service of the minority of the world’s people. This economic system meets patriarchy which subjects women to extreme exploitation of their labour and their bodies. In the article, we critique mainstream solutions to the climate crisis, many of them technological in nature, which are false, distract us from the real problems, and are serving to perpetuate further injustice and inequality between peoples. The article considers some key struggles against fossil fuels and large-scale energy projects in Africa, and outlines what women are defending and proposing in their resistances. The article points out that women are protecting the environments and ecosystems upon which their lives and that of their families and communities depend. They are defending the rights of future generations to have air to breathe, water to drink, and safe food to eat. And they are resisting the imposition of projects that are contributing to planetary destruction. We argue that the majority of women in Africa, who carry the burden of the climate and ecological crisis and who have paradoxically contributed the least to the problem, are practicing and proposing, in their resistance, a development alternative which all humanity must respect and echo if we and the planet are to survive. The article concludes by describing and promoting an Africa-wide charter building process in which working class and peasant women will define a Just Development Agenda for nature and humanity.

Topics: Class, Environment, Climate Change, Feminisms, Ecofeminism, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Infrastructure, Energy, Livelihoods Regions: Africa

Year: 2020

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