Chapter 3 GLOBAL GENDER AND ENVIRONMENT OUTLOOK Chapter 1


positions Chapter 4:


in


regard to environmental sustainability, Chapter 2


change and outlooks. [See also references to groups in: Australia (Dominey-Howes et al. 2014), Haiti (Laguerre 2011), Japan (Ozawa 2012), Nepal (Knight and Sollom 2012) and the United States (D’ooge 2008).


Large-scale structural forces holding back transformational change


To make the transformational changes needed to move towards gender-equitable environmental sustainability, it is necessary to challenge the overarching systems that produce currently prevailing unsustainable environmental and gender inequality – and that slow progress. Large-scale structural forces, many of which have existed for decades (and some for centuries), hinder transformative change. They include:


Conventional framing of “the environment”: Most environmental assessments conceptualize “the environment” within a physical, biosystem framework. Political ecology frameworks that treat it as socially constructed and perceived are still marginalized in much mainstream environmental work (Beuchler and Hanson 2015; Forsyth 2004; Rocheleau 1996). Climate change, for example, is conventionally addressed primarily as a scientific problem requiring technological and scientific solutions; at policy levels it is seldom discussed as a problem of ideologies and economies of domination, exploitation and colonialism – all of which represent credible approaches to understanding its drivers and impacts


(Gaard 2015). The physical-sciences-first


approach sidelines social and gender analysis (Castree et al. 2014).


Pervasive gender inequality: One of the most powerful contexts of the current state of social and environmental relations is gender inequality. It is pervasive and universal, and is sustained by visible and invisible practices in public and private domains.


Gender equality,


similarly,


exists on multiple planes


simultaneously and progress across those planes is uneven.


The pace of change in reducing the gender gap has slowed in the last three years (WEF 2015). The Global Gender Gap Index, a composite index compiled by the World Economic Forum (WEF) based on economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health


and survival, and political empowerment,


indicates that no country has yet achieved full gender equality. The highest ranked countries (Iceland, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Ireland) have closed over 80% of their gender gaps; the lowest ranked country (Yemen) has closed a little less than half of its gender gaps. Based on the current global rate at which countries’ gender gaps are being closed, it is estimated that reaching parity in the economic area will take a century or more (WEF 2015).


Gender inequalities are intersectional and magnified by other social positions (Symington 2004; Crenshaw 1989). Multiple and multiplying layers of inequality are experienced by women who are indigenous; or members of sexual, racial or other minorities; or the elderly and the poor. As pervasive as gender differences and inequalities are, they are often hidden. Sometimes, as in the case of outbreaks of large-scale gender-based violence, individuals and institutions acting in what they see to be their vested interests, often in collusion with powerful institutional actors such as governments, actively hide the scale, scope and nature of the problem. Examples of the cooperation of multiple parties in suppressing evidence of widespread sexual abuse have recently come to light in regards to mining operations in Guatemala, and with UN peacekeeping efforts, but these are merely two of many (Deschamps et al. 2015; Mendez and Carrera 2015). Such denials are typically nested within and supported by the political and economic contexts that are the overarching contexts of everyday life.


“The planet has boundaries. We are living as though it doesn’t. Some states have historical responsibilities for the damage they’ve done during the industrial era; other states have small ecological footprints and yet suffer most from climate change, global warming, ocean acidification and environmental damage. And everyone has to urgently change consumption and production systems, now! No mines, no geo-engineering, no commodification of nature, no more.”


196 - Diversity Voices and Action for Equality, Fiji (2015)


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