Toward a Feminist Care Ethic for Climate Change
EXCERPTClimate change adaptation studies often highlight the specific vulnerabilities of women, particularly those living in developing countries. Among the particular burdens falling more heavily on women are poverty; residence on marginal land susceptible to subsidence, erosion, or flooding; precarious and informal employment; increasing exposure to waterborne and vector-borne disease. Drought requires female water collectors to walk farther with each passing year, during which journeys they can be subject to harassment and abuse and must forego school, employment, and other sorts of productive activities.
Attention to these considerations pertaining to women's specific vulnerabilities is essential in mapping pathways to address climate change. These considerations are intensified when we consider women's disproportionate caring responsibilities for children and the elderly. Ensuring that women and girls have expansive opportunities to express their full capacities will become more difficult in a climate-destabilized world. Because of these disproportionate vulnerabilities, climate change is indisputably a feminist issue, and the tools of feminist analysis can provide valuable leverage in developing just and equitable responses to this existential challenge.
