ABSTRACT
Climate change and environmental degradation have gendered impacts that disproportionately affect women. Predefined gender roles, tighter cultural constraints regarding roles and mobility, and unequal power relations between men and women all mean women are particularly vulnerable to climatic changes. Thus, structural inequities mean climate change intensifies existing vulnerabilities, while also creating new forms of injustices. This is exacerbated by neoliberalism, which not only contributes to the acceleration of climate change, but also the increasing unequal impacts experienced by women. Feminism offers many solutions to create a more anthropocentric world, grounded in a valuing and commitment to equality, and a feminist ethic of care. This chapter will provide contemporary examples whereby feminist and pro-feminist scholars and activists have advocated, lobbied, and mobilised for social change and action on climate change locally, nationally, and internationally. These examples highlight the ways that feminist social work is critical to addressing environmental degradation and in addressing the disproportionate impacts of climate change on vulnerable people, while also illuminating its role in moving beyond the Anthropocene. This chapter will conclude with recommendations for climate change policy, practice and research that integrates a feminist lens in understanding the issues and in designing and implementing solutions.
