Towards North‐South Interconnectedness: a Critique of Gender Dualities in Sustainable Development, the Environment and Women's Health

Abstract

Well-established bodies of scholarship that inform contemporary global debates on gender, environment and health are fundamentally based on dualistic representations of women, such as First/Third World, rich/poor and victim/polluter. In this paper, we argue that recent socioeconomic transitions -affluence in the global South and rising inequality in the global North -demand the development of gender analytical frameworks that better recognize the diversity of roles that women play in the changing global social order that impact on their health. Our paper (a) critiques the dualisms found in three influential bodies of scholarship, namely gender, environment and development, science, technology and society, and sustainable development; and (b) through our critique, conceptually develops an 'interconnectedness' perspective that focuses on the increasingly shared lived realities of women in the North and the South, to understand the emerging complex relationships between gender, environment and health.

What life in favelas can teach us about the COVID‐19 pandemic and beyond: Lessons from Dona Josefa

“…Recent socioeconomic transitions—that is, affluence in the Global South and rising inequality in the Global North—demand the development of gender analytical frameworks that better recognize the diverse roles of women in a changing global social order that impacts their health. For example, Simon‐Kumar, MacBride‐Stewart, Baker, and Saxena (2018) have called for “an ‘interconnectedness’ perspective that focuses on the increasingly shared lived realities of women in the North and the South” (p. 246).…”

Multiple Temporalities of Household Labour: The Challenge of Assessing Women's Empowerment

“…Furthermore, many women's empowerment projects have been criticized for being stubbornly based on the same normative lenses — modernization theory (where technological innovations can remedy the problem), socio‐economic considerations (prioritizing the integration of women as entrepreneurs into regional marketplaces) and androcentric viewpoints (where time spent doing ‘female’ domestic activities is often deemed unproductive) — that have plagued development programmes for decades (Khandelwal et al., 2017). Here, programmes promoting gender empowerment are often wrapped in colonial dualities that mark women in the global South as vulnerable and in need of assistance through modernizing global North economic intervention (Arora‐Jonsson, 2011; Listo, 2018; Simon‐Kumar et al., 2018). Any rejection of modernity (in this case improved cookstoves) may wind up reinforcing colonial relations that position women in the global South as ‘backward’, ‘other’ and still in need of technological intervention (Khandelwal et al., 2017; Mitchell, 2002).…”

“…Any rejection of modernity (in this case improved cookstoves) may wind up reinforcing colonial relations that position women in the global South as ‘backward’, ‘other’ and still in need of technological intervention (Khandelwal et al., 2017; Mitchell, 2002). On a more general level, the language of ‘precariousness’ that is frequently used by global development initiatives has been critiqued for ignoring broader North–South relations (largely responsible for producing such precarity) that are nearly impossible to overcome through targeted technology transfers (Nagar et al., 2002; Radcliffe, 2015; Simon‐Kumar et al., 2018).…”

Women’s Reproductive Health in Sociocultural Context

“…While paternalizing and controlling social attitudes towards women are often equated with cultures in developing countries, similarly stronger forces can be found in pronatalist societies even in highly developed countries, pointing to the interconnectedness of women's health issues across contexts [13]. Two of the articles address women's difficulties in coping with infertility in Israel.…”

“…In summary, this special issue aims to bring to the forefront the conversation about how women's health is on the one hand uniquely experienced and constructed in local settings, and on the other to draw broader conclusions from a perspective of interconnectedness of women and the shared issues that they face [13], well as from the core understanding of health as a human right [14]. The issues raised here cannot be resolved solely by providing more information, to women or to health care providers; they require open communication with women, as subjects and not objects, and from an accepting and non-judgmental viewpoint.…”