Wednesday 24th of February 2016. Part II: Concrete Guidance on Integrating Gender into Climate Action

Hi everybody,

welcome back.
I have a question I would like to hear your thoughts about:
are you dealing with women as subject or object in acting in CC?
Meaning as women affected by CC or women acting against CC?
I saw there are many sociologists and in my participatory planning decision tree I have women as planers, as users and as investors.

thank you and kind regards
Maria

PS: I am at a conference on climate change now, so my responses may be delayed.

As for women as "objects" of climate change, I think there is sufficient evidence for the global south, at least for rural areas. Yet, evidence is still lacking for urban areas, and also for the global north. But anyway, vulnerability assessments are just a first step, as adaptation is about strategic interventions to enhance resilience and to cope with climate variabilty, and here, women are definitely actors. So research should look at how they already cope with climate change, involve them in defining strategies to tap into their specific roles and challenges, their experience and skills, etc.

Hi Everyone,
One of the most important ways to bring a gender lens to our research, in my view, is to design our methods effectively. Research methods are powerful and have the ability to shape our inquiry. If gender is built into the research design, this facilitates attention to gender throughout our projects.

Some initial ideas for discussion:

1. Sex-disaggregated Data Collection

1.1. The first (and likely most obvious) method is to ensure full inclusion of women as participants in our research projects (e.g., as interview participants, survey respondents, participant-researchers in more participatory approaches, etc.). I have found this challenging in my research with farmers in Canada. Unless I specify that I want to interview "farm women", I am often referred to men, who are more often seen as "farmers". When I have tried to arrange a dual interview with a farm man and woman (an attempt to get the woman's input as well, although admittedly not a perfect strategy), women often spend parts of the interview away -- looking after children, doing laundry, or cooking. So, there are challenges in ensuring women's equal participation in the first place.

1.2. Using sex/gender indicators for data collection
The UNESCO World Water Assessment Programme has recently released a toolkit for sex-disaggregated data collection on water, which I have been a part of. With the connection between water and climate change, the tool may prove useful in our climate work also: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/environment/water/wwap/wat...

2. Gender Analysis

Sex-disaggregated data facilitates a deeper analysis of gender. There are also some research strategies we can use to facilitate gender analysis, such as:

2.1. Build gender-related inquiries into our research design (e.g., ask about it in interviews, include it in our surveys, etc.)
2.2. Include gender as an indicator in climate change indices
2.3. Analyze natural science on climate change using gender and/or intersectionality as a lens. Prof. Joni Seager has been doing some excellent work using this approach: http://www.equalclimate.org/en/background/historical_overview/who_define...

I would be interested to hear others' feedback and ideas!

I messed up a bit with the threads yesterday, so I will try to correct myself today. On this one http://www.genderportal.eu/group/gender-and-climate-change-developed-wor...
Ulrike Roehr was making a contribution to which I just answered back now.
In order to summarize my ideas for the course of the intervention today I write this post.
I was asking if there are some data-bank where one can find statistics relating number of gender-reprensentative studies vs not, for example.
In order to build strong arguments to explain the need of gender research.

What I am missing in these debates is that gender intersects with various other dimesnions (age, education, cultural background, socio-economic background etc). It is of utmost importance to bear i mind that neither women nor men are a homogenous group. Poor women might suffer from climate change, while rich ones might have the ability to adapt. Same is with mitigation measures.
That's what I tried to explain yesterday already. For me gender is a (very first) entry point, which than needs further segregation. Elaine mentioned yesterday to start from power relations - yes, but than again you have to check the power relations from a gender perspective. Thus, whereever you start is fine, but don't forget to check the gender dimensions.

there is not much around. one exception:
Anna Kaijser, & Annica Kronsell. (2014). Climate change through the lens of intersectionality. Environmental Politics, 23(3), 417–433.

Which gender-representative studies I mean scientific studies on climate change that takes into account (not only) gender issues. It will be good if one could access the data, like (I'm making this up) in 2014 only 0.4% of the publications in this set of 10 editors presented sex-disaggregated, level-of-incomme-disaggregated, social-position-disaggregated, geological-disaggregated data (to mention a few). I think such a review of the already produced data is really needed to be able to enhance gender awareness.
I couldn't agree more on the affirmation that women are not an homogeneous group, and similarities can be found into other categories, that's why I was also saying yesterday "let's define gender" and let's take a post-colonialist approach.

@ ulrike et al
am not sure if it's better to start with gender, and then look at other catagories. maybe we just want to make sure that gender is not forgotten ...?
I think for a lot of research questions, it might be easer, and more comprehensible for the rest of the world, to start with other categories e.g. related to income, class etc., as these are more visible in the public sphere. The point is that for each of this groups, there is an additional divide related to gender roles and relations which often is visible in the "private" sphere only, but can be made more visible through research.
E.g. vulnerability assessments often identify vulnerable communities based on their location and exposure, and without a gender analysis, they'd stop at this point. But gender analysis might reveal a further differentiation of vulnerability, due to cultural constraints, job segregation, formal/informal work, care work etc.
In this way, gender analysis might be based on existing methodologies, with enhancing and extending them to capture the gender divide, also in terms of responses.

Can I try a different angle, coming back to the natural/social sciences question that I think is a big challenge?
Both adaptation and mitigation are about how societies are impacted, make political decisions (or are obliged) to change, make plans about their future organisation, etc. etc. It seems to me that these are all fundamental social science question (calling on sociologists, historians, anthropologists, economists, etc. etc) and need to be treated with very high quality research. For me, that includes taking into account power, gender, class, all sorts of intersectionalities that reflect the complexity of societies. It all needs to be done !
But can social science research also link more to natural science research ?
An example : “climate services” are usually about providing satellite data on how the climate and the surface of the earth are evolving. But how are the people on the receiving end of all this data managing ? Mayors have to work with tons of figures, with ways of presenting their towns that they are not used to, municipal boundaries become yet less important … Political sciences should come in here, history too. And then, gender is part of this : gender and local administration, gender and participative politics, etc, etc;
There are lots more topic to address – someone asked about CO2 sequestration yesterday, which needs a bit of thinking …

Hi,
We are perhaps intruders here - we are linguists, looking at language on the different discussion boards of the Zooniverse citizen science site. We are using corpus linguistics methodology to look at millions of words. In this big data we are finding examples of inclusive language which allows everyone to participate and instances of language used to exclude and denigrate (or which has that effect). Some of this seems to have a gender dimension, with more men in certain categories and more women in others. We wonder if you think that there is a gender and language aspect to communication on your subject?? And whether our angle is worth pursuing as an element in new research??

HI again- just waking up here! I wrote the blurb below awhile back, wanting to emphasize the social dimension of gender,disaster and climate research. Many of the resources mentioned below are uploaded on genPort. The poster on gender and extreme heat done w/ the women & gender bureau of Health Canada is a great example of the difference gender analysis makes, as in the US and CA (to date) male mortality and morbidity is highest, not female as is generally the case, suggesting at a minimum that outreach before and during heat waves must be carefully targeted--based on gender-responsive climate research. Risk communication must be informed by gender analysis, no? Some here today will also be very familiar with PhotoVoice as a research strategy used very often and well with marginalized women. The short video on genPort about young girls in South African townships and their evaluation of a leadership development program (Girls in Risk Reduction Leadership, led by Kylah Gendade in conjunction with the African Centre for Disaster Studies) is another good model for us, I believe. It's great to hear our many voices yesterday and today - thanks to organizers and to all who also share resources and ideas!

...;

Many of you here today work more directly than I on climate and gender justice, so I focus instead on that large and growing space where gender, climate, and disaster risk reduction converge. I have uploaded a number of relevant good-practice resources, many offering annotated bibliographies of interest to gender and climate researchers and others demonstrating through example the many lines of good or promising practice that have been identified in recent years—the best informed by empirical research, certainly.

As an academic twice-removed from the field, I offer these reflections from afar on issues of concern I observe--and the questions for today that flow from these.

1. Research communities, like communities of practice, continue to be isolated if not competitive—including researchers with shared interest in gender, climate, disaster, environmental studies, and others. I have written (ranted, actually) on the need for more concerted integration of these closely joined domains—in research, policy and practice, arguing that the separate tracks of inquiry and action impede the concerted action so urgently needed. Thanks to my friend Margaret Alston for including the chapter in Research, Action and Policy: Addressing the Gendered Impacts of Climate Change (see Enarson, “Two Solitudes, Many Bridges, Big Tent: Women’s Leadership in Climate and Disaster Risk Reduction”).
How can this be challenged? Good practice in this area must support a more integrated approach. Among other approaches, this calls for financial and other material support for multidisciplinary collaborative research, and for climate/disaster researchers who integrate gender analysis and/or allow for sex-disaggregated data to be collected and made available for secondary analysis by more gender-focused scholars. It calls for editorial review policy requiring some minimal attention to gender analysis in all climate/disaster research supported with public funds, if only a statement by researchers explaining the grounds for electing not to include gender analysis. More modestly, it calls for multi-institutional research groups, mentorships, scholarships, and on-going peer training and cross-training in gender analysis and gender-responsive research designs and methodologies among environmental researchers working on climate/disaster concerns. The Gender and Disaster Sourcebook was the outcome of a 12-person global research team whose brief was to search, consolidate, and synthesize research, practice and policy tools in the area. Short-term funding limited its scope and longevity, as ever, but it was a powerful experience. Others on-line today will know I hope of integrated climate research networks with a gender focus that have been more sustained.

2. Good practice guides abound, including around gender/disaster/climate, most often produced by UN agencies to highlight promising models for change on the ground and in policy. But how do unique, contextual demonstration projects translate into new institutional/structural space that would help move us from the exceptional to the norm? Too often, it seems, we rest easy with a plentitude of excellent examples and fail to follow up as researchers (or as funders) to do the hard work of replication and long-term evaluation. Participatory evaluation is not unique to gender researchers or to environmental studies researchers but it is congruent with both. Perhaps others here today have examples to share of participatory evaluation in gender, climate and disaster practice?

3. “Women and climate change” discourse still dominates though a more holistic approach to gender is increasingly evident in research, practice and policy. Climate researchers undertaking gender-sensitive study often examine, for example, how the division of labor at every level positions women and men differently with respect to climate impacts and knowledge. This is an important insight suggesting that the practical knowledge of women and girls, boys and girls must always be examined and analyzed together in environmental research. A host of researchable questions of the ‘his and hers’ variety then emerge. But we must we careful not to confuse gender-aware climate/disaster research with gender-responsive work, i.e. action research grounded in a justice perspective which can inform or support work on the ground that empowers women and promotes gender equality. Toward this end, it seems vital for the emerging gender and climate/disaster research community to seek not only to document patterns of gender difference and commonality but to ask “With what consequences? Who benefits? What can change this?” Again, I stress that, at a minimum, these research norms should apply in publicly supported applied environmental research. There are many opportunities for research-informed advocacy, for instance in the budgets of leading gender and/or women focused organizations, many of which have a climate or disaster or modestly environmental sensibility. One example was the research project undertaken by UNIFEM (now UNWomen) after the South Asian tsunami, inspired by the realistic concern that without women funding women to examine women-specific impacts and responses, the disaster-driven windows of opportunity for change would not be recognized. I have uploaded the paper I wrote under contract on “gender breakthroughs” in tsunami response—offered here as an example of how research can stretch the impact of women’s rights organizations in this domain and vice versa.

4. Theory must always drive methods, and a great many methodologies can and should be utilized to ask and answer critical questions. The qualitative and mixed-methods lines of inquiry are particularly useful, for instance in gender-focused work engaging marginalized groups of women and men, boys and girls living in risky environments. Photovoice is one popular and effective methodology that brings voice to those with important knowledge to share. An example with which I am familiar was an initiative to support young girls as environmental leaders in the townships of South Africa, drawing them (and their families) to disaster reduction by drawing them into story telling. A video about the project can be found on GenPort (see The G.I.R.L.L. Project) and the global Photovoice Project provides many excellent examples.

5. Community-based research is one among many models for climate/disaster researchers, but a very promising approach for the kind of gender-responsive knowledge base we need. It is not uncommon in environmental studies, but also not identified or rewarded as a promising avenue for new climate/disaster researchers, including those with a gender perspective. The many training packages now available around gender, climate and disaster often include discussion and guidelines for engaging women and men, boys and girls in asset mapping and more vulnerability-focused risk mapping. This is a very promising characteristic of our work in this domain. Despite its limitations, you might enjoy a look at Working with Women at Risk: Practical Guidelines for Assessing Local Disaster Risk, designed with and for grassroots women’s groups to help low-income women be action-oriented community researchers.

6. Meaningful research includes meaningful dissemination for knowledge exchange, perhaps more important in crisis-driven research such as climate change and disasters than in other domains but always important. I hope we can discuss artful ways of sharing stories of challenge and change, including through the fabric arts (see ‘We will make meaning out of this: Women’s cultural responses to the Red River Valley flood, 2000). I also share a short fact sheet on gender and hazard mitigation and on risk communication; a poster on gender and climate justice, and a webinar presentation of possible interest when we consider disaster and climate risk communication. Professional conferences are an obvious avenue for developing and strengthening a gender-responsive research community in these areas, though disciplinary and/or institutional boundaries tend to get in the way. I was happy to be asked to review the global literature on gender and extreme heat events (uploaded poster) when Health Canada was developing heat warnings to pilot in different cities, hopeful that the initiative shown by the Bureau of Women’s Health and Gender Analysis helped climate planners reach those at most risk— in this case, men (and see Heat Wave by Erik Klinenberg). It is one among many examples of the need for sex-disaggregated and cross-tabulated data if we seek ‘science based’ environmental knowledge that is not covertly gender biased.

7. Teaching is one among so many critical means of developing and strengthening new knowledge in this area. A major global teaching initiative to support climate and disaster study informed by good gender analysis is sorely needed, not only to guide present efforts but to inform and mentor future scholars and practitioners, especially as fields such as disaster management which are rapidly professionalizing, as indicated by the many advanced graduate degrees now available. Others may be aware of gender, climate, disaster and environment research networks—I hope so. For my part, I have had just one opportunity to teach in this area but am happy to share my (outdated) Women and Climate Change syllabus from 2011 (uploaded), appreciating that scholars around the globe are teaching these same ideas at different levels, in different ways and in different contexts.

7. Finally, I offer my own two research agenda articles to suggest the wide range of entry points for including gender in environmental research generally and climate/disaster work specifically. I wrote “Through women’s eyes: A gendered research agenda for disaster social science” in 1998 with a focus on women and disaster, and the second in 2015 with a focus on men and masculinities, hoping to inspire future gender, disaster and climate researchers to explore these and related subjects. I will upload the chapter in June 2016 when the book Men, Masculinities and Disaster appears in print.

Looking forward to sharing ideas soon! Elaine enarsone@gmail.com

Dear collegues,
sorry for beeing silent in the last hour. I urgently need to put my attention to some tasks related to our gender and climate change conferene on Monday/Tuesday next week (Climate needs Change. Fostering the Potentials of Gender Research).
Thanks for all your comments and posts, and in particular thanks to GenPORT for providing the space.
Hope to be in touch for more discussions and/or collaboration somewhere, somehow.
Ulrike

Good by Ulrike and others-sorry for coming in so late.

One last thought from African American feminist activist of the 60s, Flo Kennedy: “If you’re lying in a ditch with a truck on your ankle, you don’t send somebody to the library to find out how much the truck weighs. You get the truck off.”

Our research around gender and climate is highly consequential--or will be, in the end. I hope to see the G&CC community continue to grow and also to align with others working on gender equality and disaster risk reduction...in my lifetime!

Best to all and thanks to the genPort gang! Elaine

Thank you very much to all of you because you've maked this e-discussion very fruitful in terms of high quality of thinking and resources to further develop the integration of gender in climate action research and projects.

To end with, I would like to share this video interview with Elizabeth Pollitzer that GenPORT has uploaded. In the this interview, she explains her experience on the integration of a gender perspective in a project on enviromental sensing technologies. This is a good example on how gender fits in engineering project.   

The post of this interview also include another interesting resource. This is the report "The Role of Gender-based Innovations for the UN Sustainable Development Goals Toward 2030: Better Science and Technology for All". 

As Elaine Enarson 've said, many of the resources are uploaded on GenPORT, but I've want to share more resources, you're very wellcome to do so.

If you think that GenPORT can help you to further develop the gender and climate action community, don't hesitate to share your ideas and suggestions with us (genderportal.eu@gmail.com). 

It's been a pleasure sharing this e-discussion with you.  

Lidia