Equalogy

Posts Tagged ‘women’s rights’

Women’s groups all agree on one thing about the earthqauke disaster in Haiti: to rebuild successfully, start with the women.

From Madre:

When relief is distributed by women, it has the best chance of reaching those most in need. That’s not because women are morally superior. It is because their roles as caretakers in the community means they know where every family lives, which households have new babies or disabled elders, and how to reach remote communities even in disaster conditions.

Unfortunately even before the earthquake, women were struggling in Haiti.  Now, with no resources, they are left open to violence and hunger.  The Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) is “cautiously optimistic” about a new plan that distributes rations to the female head of the household.

The programme, launched yesterday, provides women with coloured and dated vouchers that can be exchanged for a 25-kilogram (55-pound) rice ration at one of 16 centres in Port-au-Prince – including at the Sylvio Cator Stadium, which before the earthquake was the country’s national soccer stadium and now houses a tent-city of displaced Haitians.

Both Madre, AWID and other women rights groups remain adamant that helping women will result in a faster rebuilding process for the rest of Haiti.  For more excellent analysis on the ongoing crisis in Haiti check out the AWID’s new section devoted to earthquake relief.

Missed part 1? Check it out here

From AWID:

Since long before the issue garnered adequate concern on the world stage, women have been resisting, mitigating and even reversing the impacts of climate change, primarily at the local level. Moreover, not only do women tend to care for the environment, but they do so in a way that reflects how it is connected to the economy and livelihoods, health and social well-being.

This is the second article in a four-part series that explores the gendered impacts of climate change.

The first article discussed how women are impacted by climate change. Stay tuned in the coming months for part three, which explores how women are organizing in preparation for the December 2009 United Nations Conference on Climate Change; and part four, which discusses how the outcomes of the conference might impact women’s rights.

By Masum Momaya

Climate Change is now on the minds and lips of many people in local and international policy spaces. Yet, many women in large part due to their social roles as caretakers and their livelihoods as farmers, have been observing and mitigating the impact of climate change for generations. Today, they continue to care for the environment in their day-to-day interactions with it and also bring their experiences to legal and policymaking spaces at local, national, regional and international levels.

Because many live so intimately with the land and are often responsible for food, fuel, shelter, water and medicine in their families, women’s understanding of the climate change transcends science, statistics and physical changes to include the socioeconomic dimensions. Specifically, women have long been feeling the effects of agricultural policies dominated by corporate interests; the plunder and extraction of natural resource by governments and the private sector for profit; the oppression of indigenous peoples and their knowledge of biodiversity; the health impact of air, water and food pollutants; and the inadequacy of market-driven solutions in halting carbon emissions.

Grassroots Resistance

In Kenya, Wangari Maathai and the women of the Green Belt Movement have been planting trees and conserving water to replenish the rapid deforestation. What started out as a movement to simply replace trees that had been cut with seedlings has expanded to include a movement for peace, as Maathai herself found that environmental problems were a symptom and by-product of bad governance and widespread marginalization of women. The act of planting trees initially brought women together to exchange ideas and tap their knowledge of the environment. Yet, it eventually led them to work for peace and accountability, with some running for local and national positions. In this movement and various others worldwide, the destruction of the environment has politicized women and they have been at the forefront of an integrated analysis of and approach towards halting climate change.

In India, monocropping, or the strategy of planting one crop en masse for higher yields, and the increased used of harsh pesticides has eroded the soil. Large agribusiness corporations have developed and pushed the use of genetically modified seeds for these weaker soils, which have required harsher, more expensive pesticides and not necessarily yielded fruitful harvest. In desperation, such corporations have stolen seeds from local farmers, attempting to patent the seeds using intellectual property laws. [1] Women of the Navdanya movement in these farming communities have been selecting and saving strong seeds as a means of survival and resistance to large agribusiness and a means of maintaining indigenous biodiversity, and they are now fighting the patenting of their seeds in courts.

In Nigeria, partnerships between government officials and corporations have facilitated large-scale drilling and extraction of oil, releasing copious poisonous vapors and robbing local Nigerians of benefiting from or sharing in profits. Instead, local workers face low wages and hazardous working conditions while the surroundings environs are devastated. Using shaming tactics and strength in numbers, women in Nigeria have organized to either shut down the drilling or forced corporations to change their environmental and labor practices, ensuring that both people and the environment are protected.

In Bolivia, women played instrumental roles in community-based struggles against privatization of water provisions in Cochabamba. Faced with a government who decided to turn over the country’s water supply to be managed by large, multinational corporations, who in turn charged exorbitant, prohibitive prices for water, citizens rallied to create water associations and cooperatives, build water storage tanks, construct distribution networks, and drill wells, using limited resources. Acutely aware of the need for water for nutrition, disease eradication, sanitation, hygiene and farming, women worldwide are fighting the impacts of water privatization.

Influencing Policy

At the local level, many women lawyers are invoking legal systems to fight against environmental destruction and climate change. For example, Olya Melen has taken the Ukrainian government to task for allowing large cargo ships to dredge a canal across the Danube Delta wetlands, harming its biodiversity. In Papua New Guinea, Anne Kajir has been fighting for land rights on behalf of indigenous landowners who have seen massive logging in their rainforest. And in Kazakhstan, Kaisha Atakhanova has organized a movement to lobby against her country’s importing of nuclear waste, which has threatened to add to already high occurrences of genetic mutations, cancer and irradiated food resulting from decades of existing nuclear emissions.

At the national level, women form an increasing number of the ranks of Green Parties, which are advancing multi-issue social agendas, especially in Europe. In addition to pushing for environmental concerns to be at the forefront of policymaking agendas, many Green Parties are also concerned with grassroots democracy, sustainable development, nonviolence, women’s rights, indigenous rights and social justice – and many parties’ platforms are set and championed by women leaders in Parliaments.

Women’s rights groups and some researchers in various countries are also lobbying governments to include access to contraception and comprehensive reproductive health services in their agendas and funding to address climate change. A recent study concludes that universal access to reproductive health could be one of the most cost effective ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Also, according to RH Reality Check, an online publication committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights, “rapid population growth can exacerbate existing vulnerability to the impacts of climate change.” The publication explains, for example, that “population growth rates in highly vulnerable low elevation coastal zones in Bangladesh and China are nearly twice as high as national averages; and in Ethiopia, the combination of rapid population growth and climate-induced declines in agricultural production will heighten food insecurity.” [2] Nevertheless, advocates must be cautious that women are not coerced as population control targets in their efforts to curb climate change. At the international level, women’s rights groups have been documenting and raising awareness about the gendered impact of climate change and also building the capacity of local organizations and regional networks to integrate an analysis of and advocacy around climate change integrate into the other issues they address via resource manuals, trainings and convenings.

Women’s rights organizations have also been increasingly participating in high-level climate change discussions, including questioning the dominance of market-driven solutions such as carbon trading to curb emissions. For example, Yifat Susskind of MADRE, an international women’s human rights organization, has explained that carbon trading “allows companies with high carbon emissions to fund projects that supposedly absorb carbon in exchange for their continued pollution. [This] does not address the root cause of climate change, which is unsustainable use of resources. It simply enables the continued emission of carbon. In a perverse way, [it] creates an incentive for carbon pollution by turning emissions into a tradable commodity.” [3]

Amidst a geopolitical landscape populated with powerful and marginalized stakeholders and influenced by complex political and private sector agendas, the upcoming United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen will provide yet another space in which to influence global policy and campaign for gender equality to be brought about in concert with environmental protection.

Learn more about Women’s Strategies to Address Climate Change:

Gender Action

Gender CC – Climate Justice for Women

International Union for Conservation of Nature Gender-Based Advocacy on Climate Change

Oxfam Campaign Against Climate Change

Women’s Environment & Development Organization Campaign on Climate Change

Masum Momaya is doing a four part series answering the question “How are women impacted by climate change?”  All four articles will be psoted on AWID, but I’ll also be posting them in their entirety here.  On to part one:

Commentary on and analysis of climated change is often gender-blind. Yet, women, due to their productive and reproductive roles in families and communities, often bear the brunt of its impact. In particular, women are affected by climate changes related to water, soil, food and disease outbreaks.

The is the first article in a four-part series which explores the gendered impacts of climate change. Stay tuned in the coming months for part two, which details how women are responding to climate change “on the ground;” part three, which explores how women are organizing in preparation for the December 2009 United Nations Conference on Climate Change; and part four, which discusses how the outcomes of the conference might impact women’s rights.

By Masum Momaya

Climate Change refers to changes in the climate over time, including regional or global temperature changes and the increased prevalence of extreme weather conditions. Resulting effects and evidence of climate change include melting glaciers and permafrost; elevated water levels in oceans; forest fires; fatal heat waves, prolonged droughts; water shortages; desertification; soil erosion; erratic rain fall; and severe cyclones, hurricanes and floods. [1]

According to the vast majority of scientists, climate change is the result of human activity – including the clearing of tropical forests for wood, rubber and other products and the copious burning of fossil fuels (i.e. oil, coal and natural gas) to drive cars, generate electricity, and operate homes and businesses. Released emissions from burning fossil fuels act like a blanket, trapping heat in the Earth’s atmosphere and altering weather patterns around the world. {2]

Women are particularly affected by climate change because they generally do not have secure, affordable access to and control over land, water, livestock and trees; thus, they are forced to make do with limited resources and alternatives when their subsistence needs and livelihoods are threatened. Elderly women, disabled women, women widows and indigenous women often face the most acute challenges related to climate change whilst having fewer resources to compensate for and adjust to changes.

Water

Climate change has wreaked havoc on water supplies around the globe. Some places in the world, including much of the African continent, are experiencing more frequent and prolonged droughts and water shortages. Lowered water levels lead to soil erosion, desertification, and when combined with pervasive hot temperatures, result in heat waves, forest fires and deaths from dehydration and heat stroke. Other places in the world have seen massive increases in the frequency and severity of cyclones, hurricanes, floods, typhoons and tsunamis. In such places, the water table is rising, rainfall is overabundant, and atmospheric conditions result in frequent natural disasters. In both instances, women cope with the changes in water.

As the primary collectors of water in the Global South, women and girls now have to walk or travel farther to obtain water and employ more intensive means to collect and store water. In some cases, girls are likely to not attend school to complete these tasks or perform other chores while their mothers get water or engage in other income-generating activities when existing water-dependent tasks such as farming are threatened. Moreover, in some places, it is dangerous for women and girls to travel far to get water – they are raped and abducted as they walk long distances through conflict-ridden territory, sometimes unaccompanied. [3]

In places where water is scarce and difficult to obtain, some governments have turned to the private sector to manage the filtering and distribution of water. More often than not, this has compromised access and affordability of water as many companies seek to turn a profit – often bottling and selling the water to those in the Global North who can pay more for it. When faced with high costs of water, women, who generally balance the allocation of household resources to meet basis needs, are often forced to make difficult choices and trade-offs between food, water, medicines, health care and school fees. [4]

In places like Asia and the Caribbean, women have been faced with either death or difficult rebuilding of lives and homes in the face of severe cyclones, hurricanes, floods and tsunamis. A study of extreme weather between 1981-2002 found that natural disasters kill more women than men or kill women at an earlier age than men. For example, women vastly outnumbered men in tsunami deaths in 2004 and annually, women outnumber men in cyclone deaths in Bangladesh. [5]

Many women are also widowed and made refugees in such extreme weather events, left to generate income, provide for their children and rebuild homes on their own. In camps and temporary housing settlements, women are also vulnerable to gender-based violence. [6] Moreover, changes in ocean temperatures and pollutants in oceans, affect women directly and indirectly. Fisherwomen around the world are seeing changes in the quantity and health of fish available, threatening livelihoods in fishing communities populated by women. [7] Additionally, the gradual warming of the ocean is causing coral bleaching. The loss of coral reefs damages the tourism industry, in which women comprise 46% of the workforce. [8]

Soil & Food

In addition to the impact of climate change on water, permanent temperature changes have reduced the number and biodiversity of available plants, including for medicinal purposes. [9] As a large percentage of the world’s farmers, food gatherers and healers, women are often dependent on local ecosystems for health and livelihoods. Rural women alone are responsible for half of the world’s food production and produce between 60-80% of the food in the Global South. [10]

Temperature changes have limited the kind and diversity of crops farmers, the majority of whom are women, are able to grow, especially to accommodate climate variability itself. [11] For example, atmospheric brown clouds due to increased aerosol and greenhouse gas concentrations are reducing rice harvests worldwide, and rice is a staple food providing the majority of calories in the Global South. [12] This impacts not only nutrition of local families and communities but also income-generating prospects as farmers have fewer choices about what to grow, when and how. Also, since long-run arability of land is dependent on crop diversity and crop rotation, this threatens farmers’ long-term prospects for generating income using the same land and farming techniques.

Moreover, when food is scarce and/or expensive, women and girls are more vulnerable to malnutrition and starvation. [13] For instance, an UNDP study found that rainfall shortages in India resulted in periods of low food consumption, rising food prices and starvation-related deaths of girls. [14] Similarly, during the bread crisis in Egypt between 2007-2008, women and girls compensated for the shortages of bread by working more for paid income outside the home, eating less and spending more time preparing less expensive food from scratch. [15]

Disease

Climate variability also contributes to disease outbreaks in which women are most affected. Temperature changes, lack of clean and adequate water and sanitation infrastructure and lack of adequate, nutritious food can result in the rapid multiplication and spread of disease-carrying insects and pathogens and viral strains. For example, rising temperatures in the East African highlands played a critical role in malaria epidemics. [16] And, in Bangladesh, which experiences severe floods and typhoons, climate change accounted for an estimated 70% variation in recent cholera incidence. [17]

When faced with epidemics, women more often have less access to medical services than men and their workloads increase when they have to spend more time caring for the sick. Also, women and children form the majority (70%) of the world’s poor, and poor households affected by disease have fewer resources to adapt. [18]

Overall, a review of climate changes related to water, soil, food and disease outbreaks shows that women are uniquely impacted. Discussions and policy proposals at the upcoming United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen must consider this unique impact and the perspectives, expertise and “on the ground” experience women bring to this issue.

What bravery!  The piece is too descriptive to paraphrase, so here are some highlights written by Anna Badkhen for Ms. Magazine.

On a bullet-scarred side street in Baghdad’s downtown, where U.S. Marines famously helped tear down the statue of Saddam Hussein in April of 2003, an inconspicuous entryway tucked between a steel-shuttered shop and a rickety candy stall leads to a flight of steep concrete stairs. Rusted water pipes run precariously over and across the poorly lit top step, tripping first-time visitors. The second-floor landing bottlenecks into a dark, empty hallway. Women in black abayas hurry across the buckled floor tiles in silence and quickly disappear through an unmarked plywood door on the right.The decrepit two-bedroom apartment behind this unassuming portal is an essential junction of what activists in Iraq and their U.S. supporters call the Underground Railroad. This Railroad is a small, clandestine network of several shelters, located mostly in Baghdad, for the countless but commonly overlooked victims of the war in Iraq: women who have been raped, battered or forced into prostitution, or women who, accused of bringing dishonor to their families by having been abused, have been rejected or even threatened with death by their relatives.

In a country ravaged by war and fractured along sectarian lines, these shelters serve women who have nowhere else to turn for help. Operated despite recurring threats and lack of government support by a team of 35 Iraqi activists who call themselves the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), the shelters offer a glint of hope for civil society.

The Underground Railroad was founded in 2004 by Baghdad-born architect-turned-feminist-organizer Yanar Mohammed, head of OWFI, along with MADRE, an international women’s rights group based in New York. It provides the only sanctuaries for victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence outside the quasi-autonomous Kurdistan region in northern Iraq, where the local government and NGOs operate several similar shelters. In addition to providing temporary asylum, it helps women resettle in places where their abusers cannot find them easily. Since its inception, says MADRE Policy and Communications Director Yifat Susskind, the Railroad has helped thousands of women. Several have been transferred to Turkey, at least two now live in the U.S., but most of the rescued women have remained in Iraq.

Read the rest here!