Engendering the climate-change negotiations: experiences, challenges, and steps forward

Abstract

The United Nations is formally committed to gender mainstreaming in all policies and programmes, and that should include policy-making processes relating to climate change. Yet gender aspects are rarely addressed in climate-change policy, either at the national or at the international levels. Reasons include gaps in gender-sensitive data and knowledge about the links between gender justice1 1. We are using the term ‘gender justice’ because it is more encompassing than ‘gender equity’ or ‘gender equality’. Gender justice puts a focus on ‘what is just?’ and ‘what kind of justice do we want?’ Is it about distributional justice? In the context of climate policy, that would mean that all people have the same emission rights per capita. Or is it about recognising knowledge and competencies, e.g. of indigenous women in relation to using forest resources? Is it about putting an economic value to such knowledge, or about creating a different economy? The term ‘gender justice’ articulates a feminist approach that goes beyond seeking an equitable share in the existing power system, which has been causing the current problems. We believe this system needs to be changed. Working towards that goal, we combine strategies of campaigning from the outside with advocacy strategies operating on the inside. The present article is focusing on the latter. and climate change; and the lack of participation of women and gender experts in climate-related negotiations. This article shares insights and experiences from the international climate-change policy process, recounting the history of women's participation, demonstrating progress achieved, and hoping to inspire women and gender experts to get involved – at the local, national, regional, and international levels.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 118 citations exist upstream.