Major Issues in Gender and Environment

1. Poverty
2. Household food security
3. Women's work
4. Knowledge, culture and power
5. Population, reproductive rights and health care
6. Forest resource management
7. Energy
8. Sustainable agriculture and farming systems
9. Land reforms and land rights
10. Water resources
11. Common property and resource management
12. Migration and displacement
13. Credit and enterprise development
14. Science and Technology
15. Urban environment and services
16. Housing
17. Market economy and industrialization
18. Women's relationship with nature
19. Women's movements
20. Gender, environment and development

Source: Gender and Environment Research Network in Asia. Bangkok: Asian Institute of Technology, 1999 in http://www.gdrc.org/gender/1pager-005.html

Gender and Food Security

The state of the world's environment is vital for global food security. It was once believed that natural resources had an unlimited capacity to meet humanity's needs. It is now more widely understood that the environment is under threat and in need of protection.

Since the early 1980s considerable attention has been devoted to the relationship between women and the environment, and extensive efforts have been made to identify the effects of the international environmental crisis on women. Momentum was gathered at the workshop of non-governmental organizations, which ran parallel to the first World Conference on Women in Nairobi (1985), where it was not only recognized that the themes of "women and development" and the "environment" are interlinked but also must be incorporated into policy planning.

These efforts culminated with the finalization of the Women's Action Agenda 21, elaborated in the run-up of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and development (UNCEDA), whereby the important relationship between women and the environment was stressed.

As the world's food producers, women and men have a stake in the preservation of the environment and in environmentally sustainable development. Land and water resources form the basis of all farming systems, and their preservation is crucial to sustained and improved food production. Water is present at many levels in the life of rural women: they collect water and manage its use in the household; they farm irrigated and rain-fed crops; they know where the water can be found, how to store it, when it is scarce and whether it is safe for their family's use.

The same is true with land. Women farmers tend to use and perfect traditional cropping methods developed over time to protect precious natural resources. This makes them key players in the conservation of soil fertility.

Women employ methods such as fallowing (leaving fields uncultivated for at least a season), crop rotation (planting a field with different successive crops), intercropping (planting several different crops in a field at one time), mulching (spreading organic material on the soil around plants to avoid water evaporation) and a variety of techniques that promote soil conservation, fertility and enrichment. Planners are now recognizing the value of learning from women's local knowledge to protect and sustain the environment.

But poverty is a leading cause of environmental degradation in the developing world. Women farmers trying to eke out an existence on marginal lands, with little education and no access to agricultural resources, are often driven to adapting less labour-intensive crops and practices that may harm the environment. Soil erosion, polluted water and declining yields result.

Furthermore, as women rarely own land they cultivate there is little incentive for them to make environmentally sound decisions, while their lack of access to credit hampers them from buying technologies and inputs that would be less damaging to natural resources. These negative factors set up a cycle of declining productivity, increasing environmental degradation and food insecurity for the future.

Men and women need to be alerted to the threats that environmental degradation pose to food security. Women in particular, need to be informed about alternative methods of cooking, farming, heating and waste disposal. Gender-sensitive planning in training and technology development would not only improve production today, but it would also ensure the protection of the environment for tomorrow.

Source: Food and Agriculture Organization, Gender Unit in http://www.gdrc.org/gender/1pager-004.html

Some Gender and Environment Statistics

• Water pollution in Uzbekistan has led to an increase in birth defects and complications in pregnancy.
• Pesticide exposures in Central Sudan are linked to 22 percent of hospital stillbirths.
• Air pollution in the Ukraine has been linked to 21 percent of all illnesses affecting women and children.
• One in three women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with cancer sometime during their lives.
• Nuclear contamination in Chelyabinsk, Russia has led to a 21 percent increase in cancer and a 25 percent increase in birth defects. Half the population of child bearing age is sterile.
• In Guatemala, pesticide residues in breast milk are reported to be 250 times the amounts allowed in cow's milk.
• Most children in China take in DDT from breast milk at levels 10 times higher than internationally accepted maximums.

Source: http://www.gdrc.org/gender/1pager-003.html

Women's Health and the Environment

Women are often most sensitive to changes in the environment because they are in closest contact with the home and the land; they are the first line of defense. Survival of women and their families is closely linked to the health of the land, forests, fisheries and other natural resources. There is strong evidence of the irrevocable damage caused by environmental assaults during various stages of the life cycle, particularly to the fetus and growing child.

Unsustainable patterns of production continue with women facing serious health risks, especially reproductive health, as they become more active in the labor force. To a large extent, occupational risks to women are still unrecognized, uncharacterized and uncontrolled. Increased use of pesticides threatens women's health and the health of future generations in all parts of the world. Despite governments' commitments on environmental health in Cairo, official action and public awareness of prevention and risk reduction remain inadequate.

Source: Risks, Rights and Reforms: A 50-Country Survey Assessing Government Actions Five Years After the International Conference on Population and Development (WEDO, March 1999) in http://www.gdrc.org/gender/1pager-002.html

Introduction to gender and environment

Why explore the linkages between gender and environment? Historical context for the current discourse on gender and environment, e.g., the degradation of ecosystems, loss of biodiversity, pollution, resource depletion, the failure of western development to meet basic needs in the South, and the proliferation of waste and overconsumption in the North, the global women's movement, the environmental movement, and the development of women's, gender, and environmental studies within the academy.

Basic concepts in gender analysis:
Gender division of labour, patriarchal ideology, gender inequality, androcentrism. Basic concepts in ecology: ecosystems, interconnection, diversity, sustainability.

Emerging perspectives on gender and environment:
What is the relationship between Woman and Nature in western thought? Is the domination of women and nature rooted in patriarchal ideology? Feminist critiques of science and western concepts of "development." How does the gender division of labour structure relations to the natural world?

Women in the two-thirds world: environmental degradation and the struggle for survival:
The Green Revolution and its impacts on food production. Cash crop production, appropriation and degradation of land. How does environmental degradation affect the daily lives of poor women? What difference does class and gender make?

Women, water, fuel and forest resources. The gender division of labour and environmental impacts on women's work. Women's traditional ecological knowledge. Poverty, survival, and women's roles in maintaining the means of sustenance.

Dialogues with and within ecological feminism:
How do women engaged in environmental action define themselves? What can we learn from ecofeminist perspectives on gender and environment? What are the major weaknesses of ecofeminist theory and practice?

Political action and cultural transformation:
Ecofeminist politics, ethics, and spirituality. Issues in cultural transformation and cultural appropriation. Greenham Common, Chipko Movement, Kenya Green Belt Movement, World Women's Congress for a Healthy Planet, local stories of women and environmental action.

Sumber: http://www.gdrc.org/gender/1pager-001.html

UNEP: Gender and Environment

There is a general misunderstanding about what we mean when we refer to gender and environment. Gender mainstreaming refers to a policy of reflecting gender in all policies and programmes and to examining the effects of decisions on women and men, respectively, It is crucial that gender mainstreaming be a central factor in UNEP polities and programmes.

The topic of Gender and Environment is far more than gender mainstreaming. The discussion of Gender and Environment is based on two precepts:

1. That gender mediates human/environment interactions and all environmental use, knowledge, and assessment; and
2. That gender roles, responsibilities, expectations, norms, and the division of labor shape all forms of human relationships to the environment.

It is now very clear that gender differences and inequalities influence the extent and nature of almost every form of environmental encounter, use, and impact.

Examples from Rwanda:

1. The annual population growth rate in Rwanda is very high - over two percent. Any attempt to introduce family planning by aid agencies is met with considerable resistance by the government, churches and mosques. This is a gender issue, not a women's issue, because men control all three of these institutions.
2. At a site where American engineers had drilled new water wells, the quality of the groundwater was far higher than the river water that was traditionally the source of water for the community. Women, who collected water, did not have to travel as far, because the welts were closer to the community than the river was.

But the wells remained unused, Why? Because the main opportunity for social interaction among young men and women was when women went to the river to collect water while the men were fishing or irrigating crops.

These are two minor examples to help one get a sense of why the issue is (and must be) gender and environment rather than women and environment. The two broad principles noted above manifest themselves in a variety of environmental relations and interactions, including:

• Gender differences are evident in the use and management of natural resources, and unequal relationships in the family, community, etc. mediate women's access to resources;
• Gender differences are evident in livelihood strategies that are rooted in particular uses of the environment;
• Gender differences are evident in knowledge of the environment, knowledge of specific resources, and of environmental problems;
• Gender differences are evident in responsibilities for managing, owning, or stewarding resources, and in rights to resources;
• Gender differences are evident in encounters with the environment, in perceptions of the environment and in perceptions of the nature and severity of environmental problems;
• all of the above contribute to the gender differences that are evident in accountability, stewardship, and action for the environment.

Women and Technology Transfer

Women Need to Play a Key Role in the Transfer of Environmentally Sound Technologies(ESTs). Chapter 34 of Agenda 21 defines Environmentally Sound Technologies (ESTs) as technologies that protect the environment, are less polluting, use all resources in a sustainable manner, recycle more of their wastes and products, and handle residual wastes in a more acceptable manner than the technologies for which they are substitutes.

UNEP IETC focuses on ESTs that must be underpinned by the concomitant development of more holistic environmental management strategies. In 2002, an IETC Expert Group on ESTs drafted a preliminary set of generic environmental criteria for assessing and evaluating ESTs that include both environmental and social issues. Involvement of women at every stage of the technology transfer cycle has been identified as a key social criterion that decision makers would need to take into consideration during planning processes.

Women, Water and Sanitation ESTs

While women's involvement is important at all levels of decision-making, their participation is critical in the successful transfer of technologies at the community and household levels, as this would have an immediate effect on their surrounding environment, and their health and livelihood. This would also influence their decision-making powers in the community/household. Attention should be paid to the fact that women at different stages of their life, for instance at their reproductive age, would be affected differently by the adoption of ESTs.

Focusing on water issues, women are major users of water, and also discharge most of used water from a household - through cooking, washing, cleaning, bathing children, etc. They are also key players in maintaining the hygiene of family members. For the water to be used in a sustainable manner, it is important that they are made aware of the interrelationships between the technologies selected, the way it is applied and used in the provision of potable water, the discharge of used water, and issues related to sanitation and health. It is thus important to involve women in both the decision-making process, i.e. selection of ESTs, as well as in implementation, i.e. adoption and use of ESTs.

CASE STUDY: In the suburbs and districts of Dibuchi, people drilled bore wells within the boundaries of their houses, where they also dug holes for toilet purposes. This resulted in water contamination and the spread of water-borne diseases, which led in turn to the death of many children. Such situation could have been avoided if EST was selected and adopted in an appropriate manner, taking women's needs and wishes into consideration. (Source: UNEP International Environmental Technology Center).

The connections between gender relations, environmental change and vulnerability have only begun to be studied. Vulnerability to the detrimental effects of degraded environments are gendered; the effects of improvements in environmental quality don't ripple through a community in equal ways across race, age, class, and gender lines; and vulnerability to environmental change and abilities to cope with or compensate for environmental change are gendered.

A gender-segregated workforce results in different exposures to environmental risks for women and men. Consider these issues:

• men might be exposed to toxic chemicals used in mining, women will be exposed to pesticides used in export flower-industry)
• women's and men's income-generating activities may require specific resources (fuel, water) that produce particular wastes
• environmental contamination produces different health hazards for men and women - women may be particularly vulnerable to home-based hazards such as indoor pollution
• women's workload to provide resources for the household (water, fuel, food) increases when resources become scarce
• if environmental hazards produce illness, men and women have different responsibilities for caring for ill family members
• responses to environmental change vary with age, class, family hierarchy, and gender
• biases in educational and training systems may mean that women are less equipped than their male counterparts to understand, cope with, and anticipate environmental change or resource conditions.

One of the cumulative effects of all these gendered relationships is that even perceptions of the environment and of the state of the environment are often shaped by gender.

Source: Abstracted from documents of -
United Nations Environment Programme
UNEP's Division of Early Warning and Assessment
UNEP's International Environmental Technology Center http://www.gdrc.org/gender/a21/unep-gender-environment.html

Currents in Development and Gender

Is poverty female?

It has become common in development circles to talk of the 'feminisation of poverty'. The phrase implies that poverty is becoming a female phenomenon, or that women are becoming poorer relative to men. This trend is often linked to an increase in the number of female-headed households, to the informalisation of labour markets and, generally, to the economic crises and adjustments of the 1980s in Latin America and Africa.
Because many studies on poverty do not look inside the household, evidence is lacking to show a feminisation of poverty. Moreover, the evidence we do have does not always show that more women than men are poor, or that their proportion among the poor, relative to men, is increasing. Certain groups of women - including some but by no means all female heads of household - may be particularly vulnerable to poverty. Women are discriminated against within the household, in legal and property rights, in access to financial resources, in labour markets and by public sector institutions. But not all women are poor and not all poor people are women. It does not advance attempts to combat gender discrimination, or assist in poverty alleviation efforts, if women and the poor are treated as synonymous.

A new BRIDGE Report explores in detail the complex relationship between gender discrimination and poverty.

From BRIDGE Report No. 30: Gender and Poverty, S. Baden with K. Milward, commissioned by SIDA, January 1995 in http://www.gdrc.org/gender/gender-and-envi.html

Can't pay, won't pay! women priced out of the water market

Integrated water resources management (WRM) is currently high on the development agenda. It is the subject of a recent World Bank Policy Paper (1993). Given the likely influence of the Bank's new WRM policy - around 13 percent of Bank funds are invested in water projects - it is crucial to ensure that gender issues have not been overlooked.

The new WRM approach stresses the economic value of water as a scarce resource. Conservation and pricing are the main mechanisms proposed to limit waste and inefficient use. There is also a shift towards decentralised management and delivery of services, to reduce costs and increase the participation of water users. Pricing of water resources is aimed at moving water from low to high value uses. But as water markets develop, men may see gain in selling water for income, reducing women's access to water for non-market uses or in the production of 'low value' crops for household consumption.

Recent research reveals that women are often willing to pay more than men for improved services. But women are unable to commit to major financial outlays. Their desire for improved services may not be matched by ability to pay, or to command resources within the household. Pricing and financing mechanisms for water services must take this into account.

"Women's desire for improved services may not be matched by ability to pay".

Often, where communities have to pay for new water supplies, revenues prove surprisingly low. Affordability studies to determine appropriate water tariffs focus on men, whereas women pay a high proportion of new charges. In such cases, not only are some poor women denied access to water but overall project sustainability may be undermined due to lack of funds.

From BRIDGE Report no. 21: Water Resources Management: A Macro-level Analysis from a Gender Perspective, by C. Green with S. Baden, commissioned by SIDA, January 1994 in http://www.gdrc.org/gender/gender-and-envi.html

Do environmental projects promote gender equity?

In the 1980s, governments and development agencies became much more aware of the need to consider gender issues in their environmental and natural resource management programmes. This led to changes in project design and implementation. It is too soon to say definitively how well this new gender-sensitive approach is working. But it may be a mistake to expect too much of the new style interventions.

Policy makers first came to appreciate that women 'play an essential role in the management of natural resources, including soil, water, forests and energy...and often have a profound traditional and contemporary knowledge of the natural world around them'. (World Bank, 1991). The exclusion of women from environmental projects - through outright neglect or belief in the gender neutrality of projects - would thus be a recipe for project failure.

Subsequently, donor agencies came to see women as especially vulnerable: 'their responsibilities as day-to-day environmental managers ...make women both victims of and contributors to the natural environment's degradation and pollution.' (Ibid).

On the other hand, gradually, awareness grew of many grassroots success stories of women fighting to conserve local resources - such as those described in Power to Change (Women's Feature Service, 1994). This then led to women being viewed as 'major local assets to be harnessed in the interests of better environmental management' (Davidson cited in Braidotti et al, 1994).

The new style of environmental project accordingly asks whether natural resource users are male or female and is concerned to 'reach the right people' in the delivery of services. For example, social forestry schemes have been redesigned, recognising the diverse uses of tree products and different species preferences of men and women: men typically want timber for construction and fencing, while women need fodder and woodfuel. And, in water and sanitation activities, women's participation on water committees or in maintaining facilities is becoming the rule rather than the exception.

"Women were seen as 'assets to be harnessed in the interests of better environmental management'".

But the ideas behind the new approach are not always honoured in practice. First, project intentions can be subverted. Leaving environmental management to community level institutions - such as those promoted by the Aga Khan programme in northern Pakistan - does not guarantee women's access to project resources. And the aim of involving women at all stages of the project cycle often translates into demands on women to do voluntary work, without giving them a fair share of project benefits.

Second, compared to a gender analysis of the underlying problems, environmental projects promote a limited set of aims. Policy documents (e.g. World Bank, 1991) acknowledge that lack of property rights reduces women's capacity to conserve environmental resources but the new approach does not address this issue. Donors still favour giving women access to credit, to help them manage resources and build up assets. This is naive in assuming that traditional male control over land and other assets will not extend to newly acquired natural resources. Trying to give women authority within isolated projects without taking into account their restricted property rights is almost bound to fail.

Is there any way of strengthening women's control over resources in environmental projects? Legal changes guaranteeing women independent property rights and increased political representation are needed at the national level. But such reforms take time. They also need to be complemented at the local level by building up women's capacity to claim the new rights attained.

One approach suggested for environmental projects is support for collective actions by women (Agarwal, 1994). This has the potential to confer inalienable use rights - though not necessarily property rights - over natural resources. Women have more chance of exercising rights as a group than as individuals. Wasteland development projects in India (such as the Bankora projects in West Bengal) have successfully supported women's group efforts to regenerate forest and improve land productivity. They also build on women's greater use rights over common property than on privatised lands. But women need to keep the initiative here: new government policies in India are formalising collective management of forests under male-dominated communal institutions, undermining women's traditional property rights in forest resources.

Support for women's collective actions in addressing natural resource management problems is one instance of a general strategy to strengthen women's bargaining power in their relations with men. Other examples need to be found to develop the policy relevance of this approach to a broad range of environmental problems.

Susan Joekes, IDS Fellow in http://www.gdrc.org/gender/gender-and-envi.html

Gender and the Environment

"Women ... play an essential role in the management of natural resources, including soil, water, forests and energy ... and often have a profound traditional and contemporary knowledge of the natural world around them" - World Bank

BRIDGE (briefings on development and gender) is an information analysis service specialising in gender and development issues. BRIDGE's aim is to assist development professionals in government and non-government organisations to integrate gender concerns into their work. Based at the Institute of Development Studies, in the UK, BRIDGE was set up with financial assistance from OECD-DAC agencies. ODA funded this trial issue of Development and Gender in brief.

Development and Gender in brief is a new publication providing concise, up-to-date briefings on key gender and development themes. In this issue, we ask whether recent changes in environmental policy have produced real benefits for women. Evidence suggests that many projects - in water and sanitation and social forestry, for example - fail to promote women's interests. The same is true of responses to environmental disasters such as the 1991 Bangladesh cyclone; women's needs were neglected leading to higher mortality among women than men. We also review the World Bank's new water resources management policy, which advocates water pricing to promote sustainable use. But can women pay? Currents, a special column on the back page, airs opinion on a different issue: the 'feminisation of poverty'.