Gender, climate politics and the green new deal
‘You’ve got it, Penny – climate change is gendered!’ And so too, the green new deal!
Presenters and facilitators
Jo Tenner, Convener, Women’s Environment Network Australia (WENA).
Ariel Salleh, longtime activist and author of Eco-Sufficiency and Global Justice: women write political ecology (2009).
Workshop outline
Gender equity is an essential component of a transition to a green society, this factor must be incorporated into analysis, policy and programs on any Green New Deal.
Ariel: Why is women’s ecological footprint negligible in comparison with men’s? Why do social movement studies disguise the fact that half of all worker, peasant, and Indigenous populations are women? Why are women under-represented in climate negotiations at local, national, and international levels? The absence of sex-gender literacy and indeed cross-cultural literacy among many policy analysts, academic researchers, and even activists, indicates that some ‘capacity building’ is needed.
Jo will discuss the range of ways that women are active on climate change from an international to local level. As well as presenting an analysis of the green jobs agenda from a gender perspective. In order to create a green new deal that doesn’t (at the least) reinforce existing gender inequities and at the best recognizes that gender justice goes hand in hand with environmental as well as economic justice.
Open floor discussion: On how to strengthen Oz and international women’s voices and actions in climate change and green new deal politics.
What change is needed in the subject/topic/area discussed?
How can such change be achieved?
What will I/we do to bring about changes?
Suggested reading and other information
Women’s Environment Network Australia http://wena.org.au/dp/
Minu Hemmati, GenderCC: Women for Climate Justice, Emergency Issues Panel, Commission on the Status of Women, 52 session, February 2008.
Gerd Johnsson-Latham, Initial Study of Lifestyles, Consumption Patterns, Sustainable Development and Gender, Stockholm: Ministry of Sustainable Development, 2006
Manifesto: First Continental Summit of Indigenous Women, Peru, Lucha Indigena, 2009, No. 34.
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale (London: Zed Books, 1986).
Ariel Salleh, ‘Climate Change and the “Other” Footprint’: The Commoner, 2008, No: 13: www.thecommoner.org.uk
Ariel Salleh (ed.), Eco-Sufficiency and Global Justice (London: Pluto/Melb: Spinifex, 2009).
Chapters from ‘Eco-Sufficiency’:
Ana Isla ‘Who Pays for Kyoto Protocol? Selling Oxygen and Selling Sex in Costa Rica’
Meike Spitzner, ‘How Global Warming is Gendered’
Leigh Brownhill and Terisa Turner ‘Women and the Abuja Declaration for Energy Sovereignty’
Nalini Nayak ‘Development for Some is Violence for Others’
Zohl de Ishtar ‘Nuclearised Bodies and Militarised Space’
Andrea Moraes and Ellie Perkins ‘Women and Deliberative Water Management’
Gigi Francisco and Peggy Antrobus, ‘Mainstreaming Trade and Millennium Development Goals?’.
Vandana Shiva, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development (London: Zed Books, 1989).
Women and Life on Earth (WLOE), Planet Diversity Manifesto, Bonn, 16 May 2008, available at www.wloe.org
