Gendering Climate Change: Implications for Debates, Policies and Practices

Abstract

In this article, I take the view that all disasters are interconnected, and that the deleterious nature of their impact is exacerbated for marginalized peoples, including indigenous people, children, women, older people, disabled people and those living in poverty. However, this consideration is not the main focus of this chapter. Instead, I consider gendered relations within climate change and disaster debates more generally to highlight the neglect of women’s experiences during such calamities and make suggestions for its rectification in policy debates and practice. In doing this, I consider the experiences of women as recipients of aid and as relief workers to reveal that gendered relations silence the specific experiences of women. I draw largely on an Economic and Social Sciences Research Council (ESRC) funded project on humanitarian aid delivered during the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami in one of the worst affected countries in South East Asia, Sri Lanka, but keep the locations and identity of those involved anonymous.