Women and Climate Change: A Case-Study from Northeast Ghana
Article first published online: 16 JUN 2011
© by Hypatia, Inc.
Special Issue: 2nd FEAST Special Issue
Volume 26, Issue 4, pages 762–782, Fall 2011
How to Cite
GLAZEBROOK, T. (2011), Women and Climate Change: A Case-Study from Northeast Ghana. Hypatia, 26: 762–782. doi: 10.1111/j.1527-2001.2011.01212.x
- Issue published online: 20 OCT 2011
- Article first published online: 16 JUN 2011
This paper argues that there is ethical and practical necessity for including women's needs, perspectives, and expertise in international climate change negotiations. I show that climate change contributes to women's hardships because of the conjunction of the feminization of poverty and environmental degradation caused by climate change. I then provide data I collected in Ghana to demonstrate effects of extreme weather events on women subsistence farmers and argue that women have knowledge to contribute to adaptation efforts. The final section surveys the international climate debate, assesses explanations for its gender blindness, and summarizes the progress on gender that was made at Copenhagen and Cancun in order to document and provoke movement toward climate justice for women.