Celebrating Women’s History Month
By Raquel Aviles, March 6th 2022
By including and uplifting the voices of women and supporting female-led initiatives in the climate change conversation, we broaden and deepen our understanding of a problem that disproportionately affects not only women, but many other marginalized communities.
“When empowered to actively participate in disaster planning and emergency response, women showcase a unique knowledge and skill set that allows communities to recover more quickly and more effectively.”
Climate change is presenting everyone on a global scale the opportunity to rethink and recreate the systems that perpetuate oppression in all forms and replace it with something more supportive to the natural world, which humans are intricately connected to. While we may think of relationships as solely with other people, we are also in relationship with ourselves, nature, food, and practically everything around us, whether we are aware of it or not. We must ask ourselves what role we play in the creation of those relationships and what that relationship will look like. Is it supportive and nourishing? Or oppressive and destructive? Is there a connection between the oppression and exploitation of the environment and the oppression and exploitation of women and minorities? Climate change is just as much about environmental instability as it is about instability in our social structure; finding balance throughout our society will restore balance in nature.
The impact that climate change is having and will continue to have on human beings is an inescapable reality, but there are certain populations that are disproportionately impacted, leaving some of the most vulnerable groups of people without protection. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the greatest impact will be felt by marginalized communities, especially those in third world countries and the Global South. Women make up approximately 50% of the global population’s poor, but this still doesn’t indicate that poverty is gender neutral. It is expected that men and women will not be affected at the same rate. The social mentality that leads to the domination and oppression of women is directly connected to the social mentality that leads to environmental exploitation. Ecofeminism offers us a framework for understanding how these social mentalities and oppressive conceptual frameworks exist as well as the unquestioned logic that forms their very foundation.
From racism, to sexism, to homophobia, theories like ecofeminism and deep ecology give us a lens and framework for looking at deeply held beliefs that exist within our societies and political systems to this day. At the rate we are exhausting resources and energy, we are forced to ask ourselves if it is in our best interests to exploit the natural world to the point of exhaustion. Profit has been chosen over people and planet; but has it really been 'the people,' making these calls or is there a fundamental issue at the foundation of our social, economic and political systems?
Climate Change Disproportionately Affects Women
Society, culture, and economics are just a few of the factors that play into women representing 50% of the 1.3 billion people living in poverty and 40% of the poorest households. A high percentage of poor communities that are highly dependent on natural resources are represented by women, particularly in rural areas where the major responsibility of household chores such as water supply, energy for cooking and heating, and food security fall on women and children. While women contribute up to 43% of the agricultural work in the Near East, they are mainly responsible for time consuming and labor intensive tasks that are carried out manually or with the use of simple tools. While the economy must be discussed in regards to climate change, it is often forgotten that the economy relies on the resources provided to us from the environment. In other words, there would be no economy without a healthy, stable, and balanced environment. Much of the care and labor put into agricultural endeavors is done day in and day out, yet it is still undervalued in our economic system and therefore largely uncompensated. There is little incentive and support from governments to help transition from monoculture, chemical laden production to organic, sustainable and regenerative agriculture. In many parts of the world women have “limited access to and control of environmental goods and services: they have negligible participation in decision making, and are not involved in the distribution of environmental management benefits.” This leads to women being less able to confront climate change through direct action and through some of the most effective avenues such as policy and education.
Poverty and lack of education are significant contributors that lead to high birth rates which in turn perpetuates poverty and lack of opportunity - this creates a continuous cycle hard to break free from, and sometimes the only hope is that children can help with family labor or income. Unfortunately, this means that childbearing is a form of investment available to women whose livelihood is dependent on the land; this work is often labor intensive and having more children means more hands available. At the same time, this prevents women from being able to bring in income, leaving them oftentimes without education and adequate healthcare. Key elements involved in social progress include education, employment and reproductive health. To break the cycles of poverty and exponential population growth, empowering women is an essential component by providing women with the necessary resources and opportunities to survive and thrive. Solving climate change will need to address these inequalities through reforming systems and policy, action, and individual and collective healing.
As climate change is exacerbated through human activity resulting in natural disasters, increases in frequency and severity of floods, droughts, and food insecurity, the opportunity for women to access training and education, develop skills, and earn greater income decreases. They are far more occupied with securing the household’s basic needs and core livelihood, including childcare responsibilities, long travel times to get drinking water, and wood for fuel. Inaccessibility to resources such as clean food and water, education, healthcare are only exacerbated by climate change and, when coupled with other inequalities, leave women worse off.
Fertility and Climate Change
Fossil fuel production, chemicals and plastic derived from fossil fuels, toxic waste sites, poor air and water quality are all known to affect the health of living beings and natural systems. It has resulted in a major loss of biodiversity, or what some scientists are calling the 6th major extinction, whether that be the loss of biodiversity in natural ecosystems or the effects of a lack of biodiversity on human health. There is one aspect that hasn’t been discussed often enough: fertility. While the presence of chemicals in our environment has been identified as a major cause of declining fertility, climate change is exacerbating this problem as well. While some may make the argument of regulating population growth, this comes at the expense and health of those responsible for bringing life into the world, hence affecting new life itself. According to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), 8-10% of greenhouse gas emissions is a result of unconsumed food items; we could prioritize discussions and take actions about the allocation of resources being prioritized for large industries (fast fashion, fast food, monoculture, animal factories) rather than for the distribution and consumption of basic needs, such as clean water and air and healthy food, to everyday people.
A study done on 32 million women in the United States reported that women exposed to high temperatures or air pollution are more likely to have premature, underweight or stillborn babies. While this statistic holds true across the board, African-American mothers and children are affected at a much higher rate than the population reported on in the study. This is yet another indication that not only are women being affected at a high rate, but minorities are bearing a disproportionate amount of the effects of pollution and climate change that they contribute the least to. Heat island is a term used to describe areas of higher heat temperatures (generally inhabited by minorities in the US) than surrounding areas. Women and minorities are often located near polluting industries and toxic waste sites, therefore being exposed to more pollutants and more industrial chemicals. Fossil fuels, industrial chemicals and chemicals used in daily household items, and plastics are known for having slow break-down times in the environment and also for disrupting the endocrine system in humans, yet there is little regulation on this. It not only destroys our planet but it also degrades our health.
Our bodies can handle microdoses of certain toxins, but when they are in our clothes, used to package our food, our drinks, our toiletries, our water, our fish, our soil, they will build up in our bodies to harmful levels. Since 2007, research published as part of the Journal of the American Medical Association provided evidence surrounding 57 studies linking aspects of climate change to harm associated with newborn children. If we claim to be a society that protects our most vulnerable - the old, the young, women, and minorities - then we can not allow this to remain overlooked. It is time that as a society we pay attention and support those that are especially vulnerable, as we are setting the stage for generations to come.
Moving Forward
While women are vulnerable, they are not helpless. By including and uplifting the voices of women and supporting female-led initiatives in the climate change conversation, we broaden and deepen our understanding of a problem that disproportionately affects not only women, but many other marginalized communities. It is important to further our research and understanding of climate change through modern science and technology, but it’s also important to reference indigenous knowledge and ancient practices as well as removing the economic, social, and cultural barriers that place women in vulnerable positions and that will only be exacerbated by climate change. We will need to move away from the hierarchical thinking and oppositional dualism between men and women and humans and nature and begin to place equal emphasis on all. Ultimately, working together will be what gives us the ability to move forward and address what can sometimes feel like larger than life problems. We need the innovation and creative solution capabilities of all humans in tangent with observing the natural cycles and systems of the environment. This provides us with information on how we can work with nature, rather than against it.
By drawing on inclusive, supportive, and empowering principles, such as ecofeminism and deep ecology, we are provided the opportunity to tackle climate change from a multitude of directions. Gender-specific impacts, and solutions, should be addressed particularly in areas related to water, food security, agriculture, health, disaster management, and conflict. Not only should women be part of the decision making processes at local and national levels, their needs should also be reflected in policy making and technological breakthroughs, planning, funding of climate initiatives and resource allocation. Liberation for women and the environment from human destruction are intertwined and where we see progress in one there will be progress in the other. We may not have all the answers, but we have enough science-backed information to act on innovative solutions through policy, legislation, corporations, and consumer engagement.
Many women activists are doing great work in the field, such as Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, Tessa Khan, Sunita Narain, Kate Nelson, Kotchakorn Voraakhom, and Miranda Wang. From policy, to architecture, to activism, women are leading the revolution in a greener future. To highlight a few of the ways women have stepped up:
Women in Bangladesh developed wind and flood-resistant housing foundations for their community.
Inception of the first ever Women’s Farmers Union by a group of women in rural Sudan trying to improve food security threatened by drought and famine.
Indigenous women in Nicaragua created seed banks to protect the biodiversity of the area as hurricanes become more prevalent to create regenerative livelihoods not dependent on agriculture.
Two women (Carla Gautier and Maria Gabriela Velasco) from Puerto Rico rebuilt more than 300,000 homes repurposed from shipping containers after Hurricane Maria.
Media networks and monitoring groups were established by local women of the Pacific Islands to share climate changes impacts on Fiji.
Disclaimer: While this blog post focuses on and uses the word ‘women’, it refers to any female-bodied person and is not to limit or exclude any one person or gender. Climate change affects everyone on this planet. That includes male-bodied persons as well and we recognize that all people are affected. This article simply attempts to focus on one of the many demographics that are affected disproprotiantely by climate change. It is an effort to further our understanding of climate change, and connect the missing links between people and the environment; that the health of the people is in no way separate from that of the environment.