From WID, to GAD, To WED: women, environment and sustainable development

How are women and the environment related? What are their key roles?

• They produce (farm, cultivate)
• They use (other natural resources)
• They reproduce (the next generation–think use of resources, population issues, fertility rates)
• They consume (consumption alters the environment. Women usually keep more wealth in household than men do)

We all depend on the environment to provide us with the basics–air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat, places to put waste, sources of energy, etc. Women in poor countries of the world often directly depend on the environment for their livelihoods. Any changes in the environment are likely to affect them–we don’t know how unless we understand the sorts of changes.

Where do women fit in?

• Women are more likely to be poor. They are less likely to have private property, and more likely to depend on common property resources that may be available to a broad range of resource users. Thus, despite their ‘double days,’ their time poverty, etc., they have to compete in many cases for the resources they need to help sustain the household. To the extent that these resources are disappearing or being used unsustainably, their welfare is likely to suffer (and that of the household).
• Women are stewards. They are gardeners, and often managers of biodiversity. Biodiversity we can think of as a diversity of plants and animals. The more diverse the range of plant species for instance that provide food, fuel, fodder for animals, medicinal products, etc., the more likely the local environment is to withstand stress (droughts, insect infestations, fires, etc.)
• Women are farmers, resource users. We’ve talked about male and female farming systems, and about women’s use of natural resources, especially water and fuelwood.
• Women and the environment: is their relationship to the environment different than men’s? Let’s look at some possible differences:
  

• • Consumption patterns (more for household use, less for consumer goods)
  • Division of labor—women usually cultivate a more diverse range of plant species; men often are responsible for household grains, large field crops, livestock. Monocultures are more likely associated with technology transfer and men.
  • Local knowledge—There is evidence that women’s knowledge of environment is different than men’s (one would expect that, given divisions of labor, use of different plant species);
  • Violence to environment is associated with high technology, industrialization, masculinity; philosophical views of women as more nature-centered (e.g., ecofeminism, or Shiva’s concept of the ‘feminine principle‘). Ecofeminism suggests that nature takes on feminine qualities (for instance, check out the Chinese Lao Tzu–there are numerous references to the feminine quality of nature)
  • Women’s social movements—these are often organized often around environmental issues, natural resource issues, and often begin like the Chipko Movement in India as local movements opposing changes in resource use (e.g., by private companies, state agencies)

How is women’s traditional relationship with the environment often affected by development, economic change?

• The market system–The market tends to serve the market, the world economy, NOT the environment. Environment can more reflect the needs of the market, sometimes causing ecological problems. For instance, monoculture cropping is a land use devoted entirely to producing income and commodity for markets; it displaces other land uses that may have yielded a more diverse range of resources geared more toward local subsistence or survival. Those who depend on other resources, oftentimes common property resources–often the poorest–may be most adversely impacted by increasing influence of markets.
• Science and technology versus local knowledge(commercial cropping is often accompanied by technical inputs, idea of technology transfer)
  • Benefits of commercial cropping–higher yields, more food? Benefits to whom?
    • Does the food produced feed people locally? Not necessarily. The Green Revolution in India produced great amounts of food, but it didn’t appreciably affect distribution.
  • What are the costs of agricultural innovation, modernization?
    • Increased dependence on cash economy (could markets be considered ‘gendered institutions?’ Are women equally able to participate in them?)
    • Environmentalproblems
      • chemical-intensive agriculture (pesticides, fertilizers, greater dependency on fossil fuels, accelerated depletion of this resource). Especially in tropical areas where soils are poor, chemicals must be used constantly with annual agriculture to replenish the nutrients and support the growth of crops.
      • agricultural mechanization (compaction of often poor, old tropical soils)
      • biodiversity, crop diversity
        • Under commercial cropping, the natural resource base reflects needs of market, not needs of specific groups in communities-women may lose out, where their uses of land are displaced by monocultures of commercial crops.
    • Social impacts
      • changes in division of labor–women may become unpaid laborers on men’s fields (we’ve discussed this)
      • changes in property rights, land use
        • displacement of multi-use system with monoculture–women often benefit from some of the secondary species allowed to regenerate on a piece of land.
        • individualization of property rights–greater investments in the land lead to a desire to hold on to specific parcels, taking them out of the community holdings, and in a patriarchal culture, especially with patrilineal inheritance practices, who is more likely to benefit?

What to do? How to address environmental change and the fact that these changes often harm women’s interests?

Here we come back to differences at different levels of women’s movements. Often, the ‘advocates’ and ‘scholars’ who push for structural changes from The North (the industrialized, developed world) try to avoid the notion that women are closer to nature. After all, look how nature has fared in the last two centuries–not well. Industrialization and capitalism has transformed the face of the earth, and in some ways made nature subordinate to humans and the market system. Now, it’s true–Mother Nature bats last–global warming and environmental problems don’t go away–we just push them off onto future generations, seeking short-term profits in the present.

Women’s movements in the South are less likely to have a problem with the woman/nature relationship. So many of their issues have to do with the use of natural resources. They don’t necessarily see this as a fight to diminish the effects of capitalism, but rather a desire to have more control over their environment. However . . . as the above discussion suggests, as the market spreads, women seem to have less control over their environment, and the market seems to accelerate degradation of the environment. No longer must villages and communities live within the limits of their own ecosystems. Now they can buy improved seed, fertilizer, pesticide, machinery, all dependent on exploitation of non-renewable resources and produced elsewhere (So someone else’s environment is being affected as well).

One thing is certain: Without greater participation by women in development planning, planning that takes into consideration women’s considerable use of natural resources and their important role in conserving them, it is unlikely that women’s interests will be reflected in development projects. Can women benefit from greater market participation? Perhaps. But remember their constraints to participation in the market, and observe what a market economy has done to the environment in the industrialized world–the globe is on the cusp of sweeping environmental changes that could threaten the survival of many species, humans included. Bottom-up, grassroots development that recognizes how women use the environment, what they need from it to sustain their households, and how they can participate in resource conservation and management, sounds great. But remember who controls property, what happens when population pressure begins to influence farming and resource use, and which constituents governments are likely to listen to–their own farmers, women, urban residents who want cheap food and imported goods, lending institutions that provide credit (such as the World Bank), multinational corporations looking for cheap labor and land for investment . . . Who will the leaders of countries listen to? Structural changes that recognize women’s important role in the environment may be difficult to achieve, but there are many smaller projects that are trying to foster change on a local or regional basis.

Sustainable development–some important issues

The concept of sustainable development recognizes that many societies are using the world’s resources at unsustainable rates. We’ve discussed in class how the U.S., with 5% of the population, uses over 20% of the world’s resources.

Subsistence or commercial agriculture? What’ll it be??

While many would like to put forth a model of agriculture that is subsistence-based, that protects cultures from the possibly harmful influences of world markets and cash economies, the question of whether growing populations can survive (many of whom don’t grow their own food) without the farming population increasing its productivity on the land is a legitimate concern. Sustainability implies not only the use of the environment in a way that doesn’t compromise future generations’ needs and resources, but the ability to sustain and grow enough food to feed the population. Of course, there are different ways this could be accomplished–not every country can grow all of its own food, but each must provide something of value that either is consumed by its people, or can be traded for the food and other essential resources it needs. Tricky stuff . . . But women clearly have a role to play in food production, one that is consistently underestimated.

The problems may be different in the North and the South. But one thing seems certain–countries in the South must live more within their environmental means–they don’t have the resources to intensify production, mechanize and convert to petrochemicals, etc. Historically, those societies that didn’t pay attention to signals from the environment have tended to cease to exist . . . In the U.S., if a farmer has a bad year, s/he can get a line of credit from the bank, or apply for subsidies. In most of the world, support from the state isn’t an option, and starvation is always a looming threat. So people find ways to support each other (through reciprocity, quite often), and they tend to adopt agricultural strategies that, rather than maximizing income, tend to minimize risk (can you think of how these two strategies might differ?). Producing for the market usually implies maximizing income.

Gender, population, environment connection: why is this important for sustainable development?

• Think about fertility rates and fertility behavior, population growth and use of resources. Population programs need to target men, of course, but they also have to target women. And keep in mind–there is an incentive to have large families in a low-technology, agrarian society.
• Fertility behavior is related to educational levels, gender equality. More educated women are more likely to practice birth control, space births, have less children, and have households with lower infant mortality rates.

Empowerment of women and sustainability-is there a connection?

• There is evidence that women express a greater concern for household welfare, welfare of future generations (by using the environment in more sustainable ways).
• Women’s grassroots movements are often to organized to protect natural resources
• Women might behave differently in decision making positions, processes (but are men incapable of representing women’s interests?)
• Consumer, political behavior–evidence that women have different preferences (we’ve talked about differences in how household income is spent–women are more likely to spend it for the benefit of the household–food, school fees, children’s clothes, etc., while men’s purchases tend toward private consumption, which may or may not benefit the entire household)

Some key questions

• Will change (e.g., more political, economic power) alter the relationship between women and the natural environment? Or will they merely follow in the ruts of current thinking about the relationship of humans to the environment in a market economy?
• Does globalization of the economy take away people’s local control over the environment?

General conclusions about gender, sustainability

• Gender issues may increase likelihood of sustainability, but probably at local/regional level
• Empowerment of women must be supported along with the development of a culture of sustainability. This may be an uphill battle, especially as developing countries become further drawn into the world economy.
• The women’s movement in the 20^th century was one of the most powerful cultural forces and social movements-presents an historical opportunity for change. Nothing is impossible . . .