Climate Change Politics in the UK: A Feminist Intersectional Analysis

In the face of a global crisis such as climate change, it can be easy to assume that issues of gender equality, particularly issues of gender equality in the ‘over-developed’ affluent Global North are of less critical importance. However, this assumes that the two issues, gender equality and climate change can, or even should, be separated. In this paper, I argue that the two issues should not be seen as separate since without a gendered, or feminist, perspective climate change politics may very well work to exacerbate existing inequalities. However, despite growing concern of environmental and climate justice, the issue of gender and climate change has received little scholarly attention. What is lacking is empirical evidence showing the ways in which overwhelmingly masculinised discourses of climate change can exacerbate or entrench existing inequalities, such as the gendered division of labour or the feminisation of poverty. Furthermore, existing research typically focuses on women of the Global South, allowing the focus to remain stubbornly on impacts and vulnerabilities, while invisibilising other deep-rooted patriarchal structures. Finally, the literature calls for a need to re-envisage Environmental Feminist Theory as taking a more intersectional approach, accounting for different, or multiple, intersections of oppression and marginalisation. In this paper, I address these issues in theorising how gendered priorities are considered in contemporary climate change policy and through what mechanisms can the greater inclusion of gendered priorities take a more just and inclusive approach? In order to address this question I first characterise the UKs approach to climate change politics, which I argue pays little attention to gender issues. Secondly, I argue that feminist discourses can influence the formation and implementation of climate change politics. Finally, this paper concludes that the UK climate change politics is inadequate in its consideration of women. Furthermore, existing gender in policy tools tends towards essentialist notions of women, or follows the dominant discourse of women as vulnerable or virtuous. Therefore, in this paper, I present an intersectional feminist methodological tool for ensuring that gender considerations are fully accounted, recognised and implemented throughout climate change politics.