Perm avoids serial policy failure and creates a GND conducive to carework

Respondent 5: An intersectional gender analysis can help ensure, for example, that the Green New Deal’s emphasis on shifting to renewable energy and creating new jobs simultaneously addresses the following questions: What are the programmes and policies that will create those jobs? Who sits in those power structures right now? Who’s going to be affected by those shifts? How are they intersectionally gendered? What are the divisions across socioeconomic classes that will affect the distribution of benefits from a Green New Deal? Across race? If those questions are not integrated into our policy solutions, what it means is we have the potential of reproducing the same inequalities that we have in our energy systems right now, not just from the perspective of who has the jobs, but who owns the energy that we produce. It is the same in policies around transportation, and agriculture, and everything else; we must always understand the gendered impacts of who has power and access and voice. It is critical to developing the policy … But beyond that, it’s because we know that if you don’t include multiple views and multiple understandings of what communities are facing, it’s like trying to read a book where every other word is missing. You’re just having a totally incomplete story. And so, things need to be community based and they need to be based on the experiences of what people do in their everyday life. It is easy to envision policies being created that don’t centre the question of, for example, what does caregiving look like? What does this mean from the perspective of teachers, of health-care workers, of people who are in the business of food creation. A lot of this just comes down to ensuring that the design of policies equitably reflect the needs of communities.

Respondent 1: We know that COVID-19 is having a disproportionate impact on women – 70 per cent of health-care workers worldwide are women. They are on the frontlines during this public health pandemic, providing care while also putting their own health at risk. We have also seen how mothers are bearing a greater burden for caregiving with school closures and there has been a drastic rise in gender-based, domestic violence as people have been sheltering in place. These aren’t one-time incidents: when climate disasters hit, we see many of the same statistics. Crises exacerbate gender-based violence and inequity, and this must be addressed in any just recovery or just transition policies.

We are already seeing why a gender analysis and approach is essential for an effective response to both the climate and pandemic crises. We are bearing witness to the resilience and innovation of women rising up to defend our communities and Mother Earth. In Kazakhstan, Dina Smailova, leader of the NeMolchi movement, is pushing for justice and policies to better protect women from domestic violence during this time of quarantine measures. In Taiwan, women environmental activists persevere through the pandemic, continuing the fight against pollution, excessive consumption, and climate change; and in the US, women elders of the Fort Peck Assiniboine Sioux Nation took action to protest the Keystone XL pipeline and raise awareness of the link between pipeline construction man camps,Footnote13 Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, and keeping COVID-19 out of their communities.

Respondents 2 and 3: The Feminist GND’s intersectional feminist analysis brings to light the impacts of the interlocking systems of oppression on those most marginalised on the basis of their gender, age, race, class, national origin, Indigenous identity, or disability, among others. The evidence is clear that women and girls are disproportionately impacted by climate breakdown. For instance, in much of the global South, women and girls are responsible for growing food and securing water and fuel for their households. When the effects of the climate crisis – like deforestation, droughts, or floods – make these crucial resources scarcer, women and girls’ workloads often increase drastically. Women also make up up to 80 per cent of people displaced by climate disaster, and when displaced, they often experience increased sexual violence and discrimination.

Further, when we consider the impact of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, we know that Black women were more likely to remain homeless and in poverty long after the hurricane. Likewise, Indigenous women experience impacts from extractive industries – threats to their territories, their rights, and increased sexual violence from the encroachment of man camps adjacent to their homes.

Without the recognition of how some are exposed to increased dangers and discrimination by virtue of their intersecting identities, we cannot shape policy that truly works for all. And when we learn from the solutions advanced by the most vulnerable, who sit at these sites of intersecting identity, we can ultimately shape better, more-inclusive policy that improves resilience for everyone.