Changing the climate on women,

zohra moosa — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 23:49:16 +0000

I had the chance to sit in the main UN session today for the first time. The topic was 'gender perspectives on climate change', which is the 'emerging issue' for this year's CSW.

Every year at the CSW there is an ‘emerging issue', a ‘priority theme', and a ‘review theme' (which is the previous year's priority theme). In effect, then, any emerging issue that is selected will actually be discussed for three conferences.

For those interested in women and the environment, sustainable development and climate change therefore, this is obviously a good year to be paying attention to the CSW since we're only on year one of three on the topic.

The panel that presented aimed to build on this background paper. Overall, they seemed to be concerned with two key issues:

The involvement of women in managing climate change (mitigation)
Developing gender-sensitive strategies to deal with the humanitarian disasters likely to result from climate change (adaptation)

Both, most delegates agreed, ultimately require that more women are represented in decision-making positions, which confirms WEN's research on women and climate change. Delegates seemed rather less clear on how to facilitate this representation or otherwise influence decision-making, however, other than confirming that women needed to engage environment ministers on gender, and not just focus on ministers for the advancement of women. The classic mainstreaming dilemma (dedicated resource versus ownership by all). To which Spain was quick to point out that its Minister for the Environment is a woman. Afraid I can't say the same for either the UK or Canada, which would be the two governments I most have a stake in.

A related challenge that was highlighted is the fact that most of the ‘experts' called in at international levels to advise on climate change come from one of three disciplines: the natural sciences, economics or the law. Virtually none ever have a background in human rights or social justice.

I thought one of the panel members did particularly well for explaining how the fact that women are disproportionately likely to die in natural disasters as a result of climate change (three to four women will die to every man) is a direct result of gender and not sex. Women have higher death rates in disasters not because they are biologically weaker or less hardy, but because of gender constructions such as:

Dress codes for women which can limit their movement and make it more difficult for them to move quickly, be agile, or swim
‘Purdah' norms which require women to be chaperoned when in the company of men they are not related to or otherwise restrict their ability to leave their homes freely
The socialisation of children whereby boys are encouraged to learn how to swim and climb trees while girls are not, or are actually discouraged

In other words, as this research on 141 countries from the LSE unequivocally states,

‘the most important reason why women are more vulnerable to the fatal impact of natural disasters is because of their lower social and economic status in many countries.'

I very much hope Suriname has sway with the Commission because it very usefully proposed the solution that has my vote. Climate change needs to be talked about from a human rights perspective to:

Capture how it impacts on people generally and women in particular
Provide the mechanisms for action that use human security as a starting point

More technocratic options simply won't change the climate for women.

open Democracy News Analysis - Changing the climate on women, - Comments

Changing the climate on women,