Women are 'saviours' or 'victims' in the climate change debate: why this is a problem

By avoiding the portrayal of women as either 'victims' or 'saviours' in climate and development literature, we can ensure that building sustainable economies does not reproduce gender injustices, write Prof Naila Kabeer, researcher Chung-Ah Baek, and Prof Deepta Chopra.

- Prof Naila Kabeer, researcher Chung-Ah Baek, and Prof Deepta Chopra

"Certain stereotypes about women have become commonplace in climate and development literature. One example is that women are either represented as 'saviours' who protect nature, or as 'victims' more vulnerable to climate impacts than men and less equipped to cope.

Simple either/or ways of seeing women overlook the power dynamics and structural factors that give rise to the stereotypes.

Based on our decades of research into gender issues and the environment, we use evidence from the global south to unpack underlying assumptions. We call for a more complex framing of gender, care and climate change.

This will help ensure that building sustainable economies doesn't reproduce gender injustices.

WOMEN AS SAVIOURS

The idea of women as 'saviours' generally revolves around their role in unpaid care work and their stake in preserving natural resources. Women and girls bear more than their share of responsibility for unpaid work essential to daily survival and intergenerational care in their communities.

This inequality, rooted in long-standing patriarchal norms, in turn generates inequalities in opportunities to make a living.

It is necessary to assess how these inequalities play out among different social groups. For example, women from more affluent classes generally outsource their unpaid care duties to paid workers, usually women, from poorer, often socially marginalised, households. That allows the more affluent to get better paid and formal employment. They feature far less in the 'women as saviour' literature on climate change.

By contrast, women from marginalised and lowincome households have no choice but to rely on their own unpaid labour to care for their families.

They also do labour-intensive tasks like fetching fuel and water and maintaining buildings without modern conveniences. They take care of family well-being without accessible public services.