Gender and Sustainability

Abstract

Sustainability and gender have been prominent on the development agenda since the 1980s, but there has been little systematic study of the links between the two. This review draws on ecofeminist theory, feminist political ecology, intrahousehold literature, and natural resource management case studies and reviews to examine how gender shapes the motives, means, and opportunities for men and women to contribute to sustainability. Particular attention is given to evidence on closeness to nature, focus on conservation, rights to resources, opportunities to exploit resources, and constraints to adoption of sustainable practices. Despite early claims that women are naturally more conserving of resources, the empirical literature, in particular, gives a more mixed and nuanced picture. Conservation is influenced not only by gender but also by a host of tangible and intangible factors, including local ecology, context, and culture, that affect incentives and the ability to adopt sustainable extraction and provision practices.

What about Gender in Climate Change? Twelve Feminist Lessons from Development

“…Knowledge about the environment can be gendered, as can attitudes and abilities that influence or even determine how small-scale farmers use and manage natural resources and how they approach new farming techniques and practices [98,115]. Rights to resources may appear as bundles of private, common or public goods [119] and may differ between customary or statutory legal institutions [120]. In settings where state-recognized property rights are lacking, gender regimes may instead govern access to, ownership of and control over resources [121].…”

Home Garden Ecosystem Services Valuation through a Gender Lens: A Case Study in the Catalan Pyrenees

“…Similarly, Xiao and Hong (2010) [42] demonstrated that women have greater internalization of environmental behaviors than men in the private sphere (e.g., recycling); however, they also warned that this might not be the case for the public sphere (e.g., environmental organization donations). Meinzen-Dick et al (2014) [5] reviewed 166 academic references on gender and natural resource management in the Global South and concluded that, although gender matters for sustainable resource management, sustainability is not intrinsic to women just because of their sex. The authors underscored the need to take into account other intangible and inherent motivations of both women and men and their material conditions.…”

“…The study of gendered differences in environmental values, attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors have been an active field of research for the past two decades (see for instance Blocker and Eckberg, 1997; Davidson and Haan, 2012;Gustafson, 1998;Byrnes et al, 1999; Meinzen-Dick et al, 2014 for an extended review) [1][2][3][4][5]. Research on gendered differences in environmental attitudes has both dealt with general environmental aspects (Zelezny et al, 2000) [6] and with a large number of specific environmental issues including water scarcity (Larson et al, 2011) [7], climate change (McCright, 2010; March et al, 2014) [8,9], natural resource management (Meinzen-Dick et al, 2014) [5], environmental risks of technology (Davidson and Freudenburg, 1996) [10], and biotechnology (Simon, 2011) [11].…”

“…Research on gendered differences in environmental attitudes has both dealt with general environmental aspects (Zelezny et al, 2000) [6] and with a large number of specific environmental issues including water scarcity (Larson et al, 2011) [7], climate change (McCright, 2010; March et al, 2014) [8,9], natural resource management (Meinzen-Dick et al, 2014) [5], environmental risks of technology (Davidson and Freudenburg, 1996) [10], and biotechnology (Simon, 2011) [11].…”

Embedding gender factor in energy input–output analysis of paddy production systems in Mazandaran Province, Iran

“…It is also estimated that if rural women like men have an appropriate access to agricultural inputs, the yield of agricultural products can increase by 2.5% in developing countries and the number of total hungers across the world will decrease by 12-17% (FAO 2011). After decades of research, it is clear that women and men have a wide range of profits and priorities related to the issue of sustainability affected by multiple factors (Meinzen-Dick et al 2014).…”