Feminism and Climate Change

[ByGrabtharsHammarWhatASaving]

I've been thinking a lot about climate change recently with all the Xr protests going on. Call me naive but I really didn't realise things were that bad. I mean, I knew they were bad, but I thought we were on track to fix it. I thought we had time to fanny around with recycling and reusable coffee cups. Reading the Xr website and seeing the phrase "mass extinction event" used over and over really got to me. I thought things were going in the right direction, but it turns out we're at ground zero. My own fault for having my head in the sand and not looking deeper into it. Anyway, I was thinking about the ways this all intersects with feminism:

1. Reproductive rights . Clearly over population is a big problem here. On the one hand, increasing access to abortion, contraception, and sex education helps with this. But any attempts to limit population growth in a more active way, such as through legislation, will necessarily infringe on women's rights. China's "single child" policy is an obvious example of this, with it's double effect of not only controlling women's reproduction but also increasing sex selective abortions/ the murder of female infants.

1. Consumerism . Rightly or wrongly, when it comes to things like food shopping, gift buying, and fashion, women have a lot more consumer power than man. Obviously this ties into patriarchal expectations such as women being "just better" at gift buying, women doing the food shop because they're SAHPs, and pressure on women to wear the last fashion which lead to the rise of cheap "fast fashion" like Primark. Under patriarchy we earn less of the money, but in many ways have a lot more say in how it's spent.

1. Unpaid labour . A lot of the stuff we're encouraged to do at an individual level to halt CC comes down to an increase in unpaid labour. Off the top of my head this includes sorting and cleaning things to be recycled, washing reusable nappies, researching and buying eco friendly products, and taking longer over cleaning jobs from using less effective but greener cleaning products. This increase in labour disproportionately affects women.

1. Politics . The main green political party in this country has aligned itself against women and alienated thousands of it's female voters. Women are being excluded from women only short lists. The ability of girls to participate fully in education is being reduced. We are seeing first hand how poorly female activists are treated by the police. In short, climate change activism and feminism have a large cross over, and in many ways a lot of the power for change is in female hands, but women are being excluded at a political and social level, and being discouraged from activism. We need more power but even the small amount we have is being taken from us.

So, those were my thoughts so far. How do we re-engage women in green politics? How do we make the changes that we need to make as a society when many of those changes will disproportionately disadvantage women? How do we balance our fight for women's rights with our desire to not go extinct?

I havent RTFT so apologies if this has already been raised.

One of my concerns about the response to the climate change crisis is that a lot of the solutions being proposed are basically financial / pricing measures. As companies / service providers are forced to internalise and account for the true (environmental) cost of their goods / services, prices will rise - and this will impact women more as they generally earn less than men and have more unpaid caring responsibilities (eg there are a lot more single mums bringing up children compared to single dads).

I see your point about pricing measures but the trouble is that this is the true cost of goods and services.

Buying cheap goods from abroad is a saving we make at the expense of factory workers, often women, who work in rubbish conditions with very few rights. It's also at the expense of the environment because cheap crap breaks and we throw it away, and then have to pay for another piece of cheap crap to replace it - which of course is what the company bosses want! I wanted to get something fixed the other month. I couldn't find anywhere and even if I had, it would have cost more to fix than to buy a new one. This is world we now live in.

I try to buy local and quality when I can because I actually think it's a long term saving both to me and to the environment and I accept that a decent wage for workers will necessarily be reflected in the price of an item.

I think one of the major problems over the past couple of decades is that we have all happily grasped at cheaper goods, often imported from abroad, whilst being conveniently ignorant of the true costs of them to foreign workers, to the environment and even to ourselves long term.

Both great points BogstandardBelle and Antibles , and a really concrete example to work around. Cheaply bought, unethically produced goods harm the women producing them. Expensive ethical goods harm the low income women buying them. Personally I'd like to see something like the baby box introduced in England, but with more of an eco focus. The Scottish baby box has a voucher for 1 reusable nappy and lots of new clothes, but if the clothes were good quality second hand that would cut down on the consumption of new goods, and the financial savings could be passed on to providing more reusable nappies. Another thing the gov could do is extend/use their energy bill grants and discounts scheme to make it more affordable for people on benefits and low incomes to switch to green energy. These are both things that would make a lower impact lifestyle more accessible to woman and esp. single mothers.

I wasn’t just thinking of consumables, more of what a lot of people think of as basics: food, fuel, etc. Plus the cost of providing shared infrastructure - roads, communications, buildings, bridges etc - the true cost of construction for all of these would rocket if the environmental costs of obtaining raw materials (mining, etc) and transporting them were included in the cost. Council / government procurement services are required to go for the lowest cost option because tax payers want value for money.

This is what people mean when they say that well meaning, individual actions are a bit pointless and that we need to convince governments to act. But governments are funded by taxpayers - and our tax bills will increase if the environmental costs are internalised.

Yes, I think you are totally right, Bogs. If people suddenly cannot drive to work, or feed their kids, that's a problem that is significant, its not like people can't get the consumer goods they want.

Another version is I heard a farmer interviewed the other day in an area where a carbon tax was coming into force. He agreed with the tax in principle, except that he could not see how he could continue to run his farm and offer his product at prices that could reasonably compete with imported food.

This isn't just a personal problem either, if he goes out of business local food will be less available to the people there and the carbon tax will have them buying food with a much higher carbon footprint.

I tend to feel confused about which decision is best. We really need to keep in mind women across the world. For example the buying local idea. What impact does that have.
Kenya mainly exports tea, coffee and horticultural products, with the country accounting for 27% of the fresh produce and 56% of the black tea market in the UK.
www.newsdeeply.com/womensadvancement/articles/2018/07/05/the-millionaire-farmer-in-kenya-who-has-no-land-of-her-own
Think global, act local. If I don't buy Kenya food what does that mean for Kenyan economy and women.

THere has always been some trade in goods, and trade in things like coffee I see as something that might carry on. It's about the amounts, I think, and also it's a luxury product in a way, nice to have but not necessary for food security.
But a lot of land given over to cash crops is not always good for people in places like Kenya.

There really isn’t a ‘best’ decision, it totally depends on what your priorities are when you cant satisfy all your criteria. We live in a liberal, market economy where individuals are allowed to make their own choices about what they buy / how many children they have / where they live (don’t get me started on rural-dwelling eco-Warriors) / how they travel etc. Up till now, the decisions we (both individually and as a society) have not been forced to Include the environmental costs of our lifestyle Choices in the price we pay for them - either directly when we purchase goods and services or indirectly through taxes.

That’s what needs to change, on a global scale, and whoever pushes it through is going to be incredibly unpopular as it’s going to hugely restrict peoples choices to do what they want, when and how. And it’s going to cost - with a disproportionate burden falling on those with lower incomes.

I ran a Friends of the Earth group for ten years but we disbanded because it was too hard. As my co-founder said, "no one is interested in political campaigning round here". It was also hard to stay on point because lots of people were joining more for promoting social justice whereas FOE's point is that social justice is only achievable and sustainable in a stable environment. The stable environment has to come first.

Anyway, Mr Attenborough, who knows a thing or two, says the silver bullet is education of girls (as that takes care of the population growth).

Then the second thing is inventing and imposing alternative zero carbon technologies which is already taking place in automotive (I know whereof I speak on this one as I help people sell inventions to China and the Chinese like breathing air just as much as we do and are planning for the future on a centralised level). All the automotive companies are issuing confidential timelines to tech. companies telling them when they will stop considering internal combustion engine technologies. But there is a lot of variation in the length of those timelines.

I think the most powerful things you can do as individuals are:

1. if you live near a population of poorly educated women who may be sent abroad to be married off (eg Bradford, etc) and have many many children, go volunteer in the local school.
2. if you can't do that because you're working,switch to ecotricity or similar
3. find out what your pension fund is invested in. What's the point of changing what you buy if your pension fund is 70% invested in oil and 30% in tobacco (as I discovered mine was). We are all the oil industry and making cosmetic changes to our end purchases just disguises that.

That’s what needs to change, on a global scale, and whoever pushes it through is going to be incredibly unpopular as it’s going to hugely restrict peoples choices to do what they want, when and how. And it’s going to cost - with a disproportionate burden falling on those with lower incomes.
My concern is that the pain is currently being felt in Africa (desertification water shortages, disappearance of lakes etc) People are already dying, conflicts are increasing and still we continue in a western bubble where we think small individual changes will solve the problem if we all pull together. I'm not sure democracy can address the changes necessary.

I'm not sure democracy can address the changes necessary.

I agree with you, unfortunately. Democracy is basically a popularity contest - and no one is going to vote for the party that promises to increase living costs and taxes. It's interest that Amoregentlemanlikemanner mentions China - that's pretty far from a liberal democracy, but their centralised "democratic dictatorship" (yeah right. it's a one party system) allows the government to push through policies in a way that western ones cannot. I'm not sure people in the UK / Europe are willing to go down that line.

"(don’t get me started on rural-dwelling eco-Warriors) "

But sustainable agriculture depends on a viable rural community. It's always going to be person and labour intensive, with relatively small farms so the farmer can actually pay attention to the land, and it will tend also to need farm labourers available if it's to avoid too much reliance on mechanisation.

But not many wants to live in a rural community in real isolation, where you have to drive into the city for shopping or a the doctor, or your kids are on the bus for an hour each way to get to school. It's not eco-friendly either. Nor is the situation in places like my fathers community, where it swells to three times it's size in the summer with imported farm labour. Imported, every year, on airplanes, from Jamaica.

There is a good reason that when our economy overall required less energy, there was a network of smaller cities, towns, and villages, the latter serving the needs of the people in rural areas. This also has the advantage of dispersing things like waste disposal and allows each built up area to be served, in terms of food production, by areas fairly close by. And cities and towns can also be fit onto patches of less productive land rather than have giant cities grow over good farmlands, wetland, etc like a cancer.

"I'm not sure democracy can address the changes necessary"

sadly I agree too. It's sobering.

Our local uni is absolutely full of Chinese students, often being taught in mass groups with poor quality curricula. They aren't coming here because Britain is "more creative" or because we teach "critical thinking" - much as we like to kid ourselves..... What they come here for is the clean air - like wealthy English people used to send their daughters to finishing school in Switzerland.

So my hope lies with the dictators sadly. I guess you have to align it with women's rights by saying that educated women have fewer children but you can't go much further than that....

So many points to think about.

Just briefly - Scandinavians pay much more in income tax than in the UK and have a very democratic society. We look to them as good examples of many things. I don't know what their carbon footprint is per capita but I have the impression they are pretty green in Western terms. If I have time later, I'll explore it.

I also want to discuss alternative technologies as I do think this may be a sliver of hope on energy and pollution front.

I also want to throw in the issue of oil and the status of women in Saudi Arabia which we conveniently ignore in order to buy their oil and sell our arms to them.

"I also want to throw in the issue of oil and the status of women in Saudi Arabia which we conveniently ignore in order to buy their oil and sell our arms to them."

Absolutely. We are all, every one of us, the oil industry.

honestly we don't have time to adopt a Scandinavian culture at this point I don't think...

"I also want to discuss alternative technologies as I do think this may be a sliver of hope on energy and pollution front. "

I agree with this but women are every bit as excluded from these world-changing techs as we were from developing steam engines and building bridges in the 19th Century. Sadly my friend who gets nominated as "women scientist of the week" (etc) is a transwomen - a brilliant and kind transwoman - but not someone who was born a baby girl.
We are stuck at the consuming end....

@Goosefoot

The people I’m thinking of aren’t interested in sustainable agriculture. They choose to live in the countryside for purely lifestyle reasons - thus making themselves entirely reliant on private car transport for everything - and think that keeping a few chickens and composting their veg makes them environmentally sound...

As I understand, the jury is very much out on whether sustainable agriculture of the kind you describe can feed 11 billion I’m kinda sceptical, and would probably put my faith in science rather than hoping for a mass return to the soil, that ship has sailed.

And... all these women and girls that we are educating out of the fields? Isn’t that going to have an impact on labour intensive sustainable agriculture? Isn’t working the fields exactly what we are encouraging them to move away from?

Scandinavians pay much more in income tax than in the UK and have a very democratic society.

I used to live in Iceland and it isn't as eco friendly there as you'd think. Yes it's lovely, but their education system is in absolute shreds and lots of people told me that having children young and living on the generous welfare payments is increasingly being seen as a good "career" choice by young women. The government are working really hard to undo the damage done by mass deforestation when it was first settled, but it's still has basically no arable land. Most of it's fresh food gets imported frozen and is already rotting by the time it's on the shelves so there's a lot of waste. On the other hand they obviously have a huge amount of geothermal energy which they make excellent use of, and there's a much greater focus on buying second hand because everything's so expensive. There's also an import tax so they don't have the same "next day Amazon delivery" culture that we do.

We are all, every one of us, the oil industry.

Reminds me of the saying "you're not in the queue, you are the queue".

I'm not sure democracy can address the changes necessary

As someone on the climate change guest post thread said, the changes that need to happen can either be something that we do or something that's done to us. We need to get our act together while we still have the luxury of choice.

So my hope lies with the dictators sadly.

I don't know if you were being ironic, Amoregentlemanlikemanner, but dictators are ten-a-penny and not exactly famed for their concern for the environment – or for the rights of women.

Conspicuous consumption, now, that's very much a dictator thing.

I only mean the dictators in China Perking.

I used to live in Iceland and it isn't as eco friendly there as you'd think

Aren't the bulk of the computers mining bitcoin and using vast amounts of electricity in Iceland?

I don't understand bitcoin but from the little I know I can't see any legitimate use for it.

Thank you all for the discussion here - lots of food for thought. I found the pinned one (guest post about mums climate march) rather depressing.
I’ve seen this referenced but don’t know much about it ‘Project Drawdown’ with educating girls 6th on the list of solutions to climate change: www.drawdown.org/solutions

I don't know anything about bitcoin I'm afraid Lass.

Great link Kizzy , I'd love to have a focal point to act on around this. I also like this ethos:

"The list is comprised primarily of “no regrets” solutions—actions that make sense to take regardless of their climate impact since they have intrinsic benefits to communities and economies."

That's the best way to get people on board, surely. All enforced austerity measures really achieve is making people feel like they're wasting their lives for no personal benefit.

Really interesting Grab. I understand the Scandinavian countries to be specifically Sweden, Norway and Denmark and those are what I was referring to but I don't mean to split geographical hairs. I was just providing a counterpoint to that of dictatorships and the power to put green policies into place. Sweden I think has a very large percentage of power generated through renewable means, and nearly all of Norways electricity production comes from hydropower (sell a ton of oil though). You are probably right though gentlemanlike that changing other nations might be impossible time-wise.

Bog, I agree that feeding billions of mouths even at subsistence level is a massive issue, however clean our energy production.

I like to hope that technology might deliver but reckon it will only be adopted when our easy lives in rich countries come under direct, unpleasant threat and much damage has been done. I say this because Malthus never dreamed we could sustain the population we actually do so I am prepared to be proved wrong by technology - necessity being the mother of invention and all that - and because I possibly read too much science fiction