ENVS6555 - Gender and Climate Crisis

The devastating impacts of climate change such as water scarcity, floods, migration, and sea level rise, are not gender neutral. Men and women, boys and girls are affected differently by these crises even though they live in the same household. Women and girls are more likely to face Inequality in access to education and jobs, health, and safety with the current approaches to combating climate change. Climate action therefore must be investigated from a gender lens. Long-standing social norms around women providing food and water for their families have increasingly put them at risk of poor physical and mental health, sexual abuse, and lack of formal education. Further, the abuse of younger boys in water-scarce areas often goes undiscussed because of the cultural restrictions and taboos around homosexuality.
In recent years, a small number of extraordinary women have emerged as global leaders in tackling the climate crisis. However, generally, women and the LGBTQIA+ community are greatly under-represented in high-level climate negotiations; tend to be disproportionately vulnerable to climate impacts, and climate solutions tend to ignore gender-specific issues perpetuating in a general bias of infrastructure and services not being gender-inclusive. This course will discuss such gender impacts of climate change, gender inclusion in climate-related workplaces, examples of gender empowerment, and ways by which gender-inclusive climate action can be designed.