Abstract
Scholars and international organizations have shown that climate change disproportionately affects women across the globe. Indigenous women and women in the Global South are especially impacted. In response, Women and Feminists for Climate Justice are mobilizing transnationally and with common demands towards a “feminist system change, not climate change.” Drawing on five years of extensive multi-sited participant action research ethnographies and interviews, this paper maps and compares the narratives and experiences of Women and Feminists for Climate Justice activists from around the world. It asks, how do women and gender non-binary people from across six continents generate collectivity and then foster shared ideology, messaging, advocacy, and international demands on climate and gender? In what similar and different ways does climate change burden them, and what do their responses to these questions reveal about the nexus between climate change and gender on a global systemic level? Transnational Feminist scholarship is fundamental to responding to these questions. This paper is also grounded in theoretical questions regarding the relationship between Racial Capitalism, Patriarchy, and the Environment. Many ecological feminists have affirmed that capitalism’s founding ideology of continuous growth has been necessitated by the coincident subordination of women, racialized and marginalized communities, and nature. They reference this interdependent subordination as the “Capitalist Patriarchy—” a global “anti-woman” system founded on the exploitation of women’s power, bodies, and labor.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Climate Change, Gender, Feminism, Women, Transnational Feminisms, Ecological Feminisms, Capitalism
