ABSTRACT
An increasing amount of evidence from all over the world has brought home the reality that vulnerability to climate change is greater for those who are poor. This is precisely the reason why gender and climate change debate focuses purely on developing countries. Although location-specifi c climatic patterns are key factors in assessing risks and threats, a number of other factors such as the levels of economic development of countries and their infrastructural preparedness, social equality and political infl uence of countries and communities will affect the extent of their vulnerability to climate fl uctuations. A question that needs to be asked at this point is why women would be considered as being more vulnerable than men. If it was just poverty that made women more vulnerable, then both women and men living in economic disadvantage would be equally vulnerable. To use a feminist approach to climate change, there is a need to place climate change vulnerabilities in context of gender analyses that take into consideration different gender roles for women and men, and unequal access to and control over resources by women and men in almost every society. These differences lead to greater vulnerability of women and allow us to place gender justice within the wider framework of the feminist political ecology of climate change. The chapter illustrates this point with an example of Tamil Nadu Women’s Collective and calls for the use of a
gender lens in international debates on climate change. In particular, it draws attention to the holistic and multi-scale approach to issues relating to gender and climate change, with special reference to South Asia. By multi-scalar it not only means geographical scale, but the need to look vertically at social structures such as class, caste, government, donor and other scales of analysis. Some discussion of shifts in global thinking that include gender within the broader debate would help. Also, climate change is being mainstreamed into development. Whether that means a more gender-sensitive approach, remains to be seen.
