Constructing Gendered Subjects in Climate Policy: A Comparative Feminist Discourse Analysis of Canada, India, and Germany

This paper analyses how national climate policies in Canada, India, and Germany discursively construct gendered subjects and how these constructions shape political participation, care, and resistance in the climate crisis. Methodologically, it employs a comparative feminist discourse analysis and an intersectional lens to foreign, security, and climate policy documents across the three countries. It reveals that despite growing attention to “women and girls,” policy texts often confine gendered agency to community resilience and unpaid care labour, obscuring structural hierarchies of class, caste, indigeneity, and migration. The paper argues that gender-just climate governance requires intersectionality as a critique of power, expanding who participates, whose knowledge counts, and whose demands shape climate politics.