ABSTRACT
Within the context of a rapidly deepening climate emergency and a collective failure to address this, not least by industrialised states, the Introduction argues for a feminist approach to climate leadership. From a relatively positive outlook in the 2010s, characterised by an increasing number of feminist national and regional leaders who championed alternative economic approaches and priorities, and an upwelling of popular climate and other related protest movements, the chapter notes how these have been overtaken and undermined by the rise, particularly in Europe and the USA, of misogynist, right-leaning, and climate dismissive politics. This chapter summarises the editors’ argument that the past few decades of gender mainstreaming, and attention to gender equality, has failed to displace prevailing economic and political structures steeped in industrial/breadwinner- and petro-masculinities, and that a refocusing on intersectional, ecological, feminism is required to break the current impasse. The Introduction defines the book’s interpretation of feminist climate leadership and also suggests that there is a wealth of feminist approaches to, and examples of, climate leadership from which to draw. The book’s contributions are summarised, to illustrate both good feminist practice in institutions with a climate remit at all geographical scales, and methodologies aligned with feminist principles which have been used to influence climate-related policy. The examples given by the chapters, and interviews with feminist political leaders, point to the efficacy of feminist climate leadership and practice. This poses the question of how we make these the norm, rather than the exception, and suggests ways we might achieve this.
