“The Earth and women are similar” said one of the panelists, a city councilor from Vienna, “in that we take from, take from, take from…” This was a dramatic and striking analogy. Since there is such a fallacy that natural resources and women labour are free, we always take from them.
On the 4th day of Copenhagen, a side event called “Gender, cities and climate change” raised the gender-sensitive climate policy issue. After all days full of technical terminology such as GHG emissions, carbon footprints; it was good chance of linking the physical sciences and their work on climate change to a social context. In fact, it is an urgent need to underline the gender-perspective in climate change, because the severest burden is born by women at all levels.
The issue can be analyzed in terms of five significant points:
1. Who decides? – Under representation of women. Share of women in executive positions managing the urban climate policy is between 0 – 30%.
2. Who does the care work? – Gender division of labour. Women do more care work, unpaid work and informal jobs. The consequences of this unbalanced division are increase in vulnerability of women, and some bad affects on women in terms of health, education and gender roles in society.
3. Where is the money? – Climate change affects people who have limited access to financial resources and it is obvious that women are the poorest of all level.
4. Gender roles and cultural roles. – Limited access of women to financial resources enlarges the gap between genders in mobility, education, and financing again.
5. Sex related factors – Processes such a menstruation and pregnancy, also some safety needs should also be kept in minds.
After all these analysis, we can point out some key concepts to establish a local gender-sensitive climate policy.
* Recognition and consideration of care economy and informal economy
* Change and improve structures, infrastructure and services in settlement areas
* Address poverty and over consumption
And, these are the steps for gender mainstreaming into climate policy
* Commitment!!
* Raise awareness on gender dimension
* Ensure equal participation of women
* Collect sex and age disaggregated data (transport, energy, consumption etc)
* Support cross-cutting capacity building (climate change unit & gender unit)
* Identify key areas and critical issues for gender and climate change policy
* Make a quick scan of existing data and planned programmes and projects as for their gender relevance.
In conclusion, the art of gender-sensitive policy has to start with recognizing and addressing gender roles and contributing to break gender stereotypes in society. Otherwise, all gender – neutral climate change policies are doomed to failure!
Esra Özkan
