Understanding Climate Change through Gender Relations

This book explains how gender, as a power relationship, influences climate change related strategies, and explores the additional pressures that climate change brings to uneven gender relations. It considers the ways in which men and women experience the impacts of these in different economic contexts. The chapters dismantle gender inequality and injustice through a critical appraisal of vulnerability and relative privilege within genders. Part I addresses conceptual frameworks and international themes concerning climate change and gender, and explores emerging ideas concerning the reification of gender relations in climate change policy. Part II offers a wide range of case studies from the Global North and the Global South to illustrate and explain the limitations to gender-blind climate change strategies.

This book will be of interest to students, scholars, practitioners and policymakers interested in climate change, environmental science, geography, politics and gender studies.

Susan Buckingham works as an independent researcher, writer and consultant on gender-environment issues. She has recently published a four-volume anthology on gender and environment and has edited five other books on environmental issues. She is currently working on the second edition of Gender and Environment (2000), which has been a key text in this area in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. She is currently the gender consultant to the EU research programme ‘URBAN-WASTE'. Susan is also a yoga practitioner and teacher and writes on yoga in research.

Virginie Le Masson is a Research Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), UK. Her research interests combine social inclusion, disaster risk reduction and climate change mitigation and adaptation. Her research also looks at the sustainable development of mountain communities. Before joining ODI, Virginie worked with the French Red Cross disaster risk management programme in the Indian Ocean, and with a study abroad programme on climate change and the politics of food, water and energy.