Gender and the Environment by Nicole Detraz: Introduction & Chapter 2

While Google-searching for literature that I could use to develop my independent study, with the theme “Women and the Environment,” I immediately encountered works by Nicole Detraz. Besides serving as a Political Science Professor at the University of Memphis, Detraz has been actively writing about the intersections between international relations, environmental studies, and gender. Gender and the Environment, Detraz’s most recent book, offers five thematic chapters which analyze five key and most-discussed environmental issues, through the gender lens. Thus, after explaining the fundamental connections between gender and the environment in the introduction, Detraz in detail discusses how gender impacts sustainability, population, consumption, and environmental justice. Each chapter consists of several parts that explain key terms within GEP, or, global environmental politics, describe their “gendered” nature, and, finally, present case studies to illustrate those connections.
As Detraz emphasizes in the introduction, her book argues primarily that, by considering the “gendered” nature of environmental issues, the global community can challenge the unjust supremacy of most traditional views and practices and, thus, shift the focus of GEP so that our goals become more inclusive and bring effective results. According to Detraz, most scholars and policy-makers already recognize environmental issues as complex and trans-boundary. However, few consider how gender roles and other elements of the patriarchal system impact humans’ interactions with the environment. Personally, I do support this statement: while I have been passionate about both sustainability and gender studies for at least three years, only recently did I start discovering the close links between the two. Moreover, when I was planning out an educational session dedicated to this topic at my school, my peers and faculty, even those involved in sustainability and feminism, reacted to this news with sincere surprise. This discovery made me think about how similar gaps in understanding prevent communities from devising effective solutions and even exacerbate environmental injustice, on the international level.
In the introduction, Detraz defines global environmental politics as a key term within the debate around climate change and its solutions. In her opinion, GEP consists of two central goals: sustainability and justice. Since I have explored the Sustainable Development Goals before, I quickly understood the connection between achieving gender equality and adopting sustainable strategies. From the instrumental point of view, women, who now make up 50.8% of the world population, do not fully realize their professional and personal potential. As a result, the world is “losing” 50% of possible initiatives and solutions, in its fight against climate degradation. Thus, to design and implement efficient solutions, on a larger scale, we have to empower women and incorporate their unique experiences.
While this perspective has appeared as obvious to me, Detraz’s second reason for reflecting on the connections between GEP and gender has surprised me – perhaps, simply because I got used to thinking in pragmatic yet unrealistic terms. Indeed, the ethical perspective seems less impactful and definite, however, it relates directly to the real experiences and sufferings of communities across the globe. As Detraz explains, currently, environmental benefits and problems remain distributed unevenly and unjustly. Usually, those who are least likely to benefit from environmental resources and most likely to suffer from climate change belong to the populations who have been historically experiencing discrimination and marginalization, due to their race, ethnicity, or, of course, sex and gender.
This injustice persists because environmental processes themselves are “gendered”: since gender intersects with society’s power relations, economic activity, and social processes, society’s relationships with the environment are influenced by gender roles and patriarchal traditions, too. Usually, society places women in such a way that they remain more vulnerable to climate change. For example, because women have less money, they are more affected by food insecurity and less likely to move out from environmentally damaged areas. Moreover, women are also given little agency compared to men when it comes to addressing environmental issues, either in scientific institutions, in governments, or in their local communities. According to Detraz, by analyzing environmental problems as gendered, intersectional issues, the global community would be better equipped to confront and address environmental injustices, as well as to fix the bias within the existing GEP.
In the second chapter, with the title “Sustainability and Sustainable Development as Gendered Concepts,” Detraz interestingly connects sustainability to the ideas of survival and resilience. Personally, I have never before associated sustainability with the very human quality of resilience. However, I liked this simple connection a lot: indeed, resilience is the quality that helps our planet absorb disruption caused by the growing human population and survive, without losing its original resources and functions. It is important that, by using the words “resilience” and “sustainability,” humans embrace the fact that they cannot exist without influencing and altering their environment. However, despite the unavoidable impact of our existence, we must strive to adopt sustainable approaches that would change the environment at a minimum cost and allow it to recover quickly.
Hence, the concept of sustainability requires us to abandon the popular belief that we do not need to care at all about how we impact and change the environment. We can no longer treat ecosystems as mere goods for us to conquer and exploit but rather appreciate and protect them. In this way, as Detraz emphasized, feminists have always supported the idea of sustainability. From the beginning, feminist scholars opposed not only patriarchial traditions but also other systems of domination and oppression, including our exploitation of the environment. This parallel made me consider one interpretation of veganism that I once heard about. As a vegan, I refuse to contribute to killing, exploiting, and eating animals since I believe that they should not suffer and deserve happiness, just like humans. However, I know that some people’s motivation for going vegan is more complex: since they resist the inequalities that humans suffer from, for instance, sexism and misogyny, they also have to extend this fight against oppression to animals. I know that this idea is a key element of the movement called “ecofeminism” and I am looking forward to further exploring this ideology, throughout my independent study.
Another fascinating idea that Detraz has explored in this chapter is the concept of local knowledge. According to Detraz, we tend to perceive the scientific community as an always-objective – if not the only – source of knowledge. However, due to gender roles, men dominate institutions and entire scientific fields related to environmental studies and sustainability. Especially, this remains true about developing countries that have not yet made much progress in terms of gender equality. For example, in Ukraine, while many women are involved in sustainability on a personal level or as activists, men still occupy most policy-making and scientific positions. As a result of these trends, we consider only “privileged voices” of men who, due to their internal biases, sometimes present very subjective ideas regarding both gender and the environment. To solve these flaws within the knowledge production, Detraz suggests considering local knowledge – first-hand accounts of climate change and sustainability methods from ordinary people. In developing countries, while being discouraged from high-level positions in science or politics, women are key carriers of this “street science” and, thus, can make incredible contributions to examining environmental degradation and devising effective solutions.