The politics of women’s lives: gendered re-presentations in Bangladesh’s climate change adaptation regime

ABSTRACT

Bangladesh is transitioning into a middle-income country but remains at risk from the negative impacts of climate change. Consequently, development efforts are gradually being replaced by climate change adaptation. In this article, I investigate how ‘gender’ is understood and conceptualized in climate change adaptation in Bangladesh, and what this means for how gender considerations are included in adaptation efforts. I build on qualitative interviews with representatives of what Kasia Paprocki has coined the ‘climate change adaptation regime’ in Dhaka, as well as participant observation at conferences, seminars, and meetings on issues relevant to gender and climate change adaptation in Bangladesh. Understanding adaptation to be political and contested, I argue that established representations of women in development and disaster thinking are now re-presented to fit with the politically negotiated consensus of what adaptation in Bangladesh should look like, and that gender mainstreaming initiatives which go beyond the understanding of adaptation as negotiated by this consensus are excluded. This may lead to increased responsibilities for women, feminizing the responsibility to adapt to climate change.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• climate change
• adaptation
• Bangladesh
• SDGs

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 This article is part of a PhD project. The project is approved by the doctoral committee, as well as by NSD – the Norwegian Centre for Research Data (Norsk senter for forskningsdata). Written consent was collected before the interviews. All interviews – with a few exceptions – were recorded, while I relied on notetaking during observations. The material has been coded thematically in accordance with Johannessen et al. (2018). Hvordan bruke teori? Nyttige verktøy i kvalitativ analyse. Universitetsforlaget., with an eye to how women are spoken about and by the research participants during interviews and in public. Government policies could also have contributed to the argument of this paper. However, as I am exploring government politics of gender and climate change extensively in another manuscript, it is not dealt with here.

2 All research participants are anonymized.

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Kathinka Fossum Evertsen

Kathinka Fossum Evertsen is holds a research position at Institute for Social Research in Oslo. She has submitted her PhD in Sociology at Nord University, and holds a master's degree in Human Rights and Humanitarian Action from Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA), Sciences Po. Her research interests include questions concerning gender, migration, climate change and knowledge production.