Women's human rights in a changing climate: highlighting the distributive effects of climate policies

Abstract

A women's rights perspective can inform and structure research on climate policy impacts on women. To date, climate policy analysis has mostly considered women as agents of climate protection, that is, objects of mitigation policies, rather than subjects in their own right. However, climate change mitigation involves direct and indirect distributive effects depending on which sectors are involved, which instruments are chosen and how funds are obtained and allocated. Since gender roles impact on individual livelihoods and activities, distributive effects are likely to be gendered. This paper suggests that women's human rights can be used as a framework for research aiming to fill this gap. They provide a well-developed, tested range of criteria for gender justice. Such assessments would allow for a more systematic and comprehensive understanding of the gendered distributive effects of climate policies, notably with regard to the particularly understudied situation in the industrialized world.

Notes

The author acknowledges support from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for the opportunity to present a paper, which later evolved into this article, at the ISA Annual Convention 2013 in San Francisco. For their insightful comments on earlier versions of this article, the author wishes to thank the reviewers, Andrea Schapper, Markus Lederer, Miranda Schreurs, Richard Hiskes, Lisa Pettibone, Richard Forrest, Inken Reimer, Sebastian Mehling and Corinna Altenburg.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lena Bendlin

Lena Bendlin holds a double degree in political science from Westfälische Wilhemls-Universität (WWU) Münster and Sciences Po Lille and is currently a PhD candidate at the Environmental Policy Research Centre in Berlin. Her dissertation project examines incentives and barriers for local climate policy in Germany and France. As a research associate at Freie Universität Berlin, Lena Bendlin has taught numerous courses on policy analysis, environmental policy, climate policy and gender. Email: [email protected]