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UCL Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction

Photo: EU ECHO Anouk Delafortrie, 2016

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Gender, Climate and the Environment

We use a gender perspective to explore the underlying causes of unsustainable development pathways, and the societal impacts of climate change and environmental degradation.

Description

We look at gender relations, inequalities and power to explore:

  1. The underlying causes of unsustainable development pathways: we are interested in gender politics, including gender imbalances in political participation and power relationships, and how these influence climate change related strategies and policy making.

  2. The societal impacts of climate change and environmental degradation: we conduct empirical research and collaborate with Non-Governmental Organisations to understand how environmental changes impact societies. We collect and analyse gender and age-disaggregated data to examine how social identities intersect and lead to different vulnerabilities and capacities to face and respond to disasters.  

  3. The (in)equalities of power in policy and programming responding to climate change and reducing disaster risks.

women and solar-panels-africa
Lecture on Gender and Climate change: why are women at more risk from global heating?

In this Lunch hour lecture, UCL researchers discuss the impacts of heat-related risks and how violence against women and girls undermines their resilience to climate change (the recording of the lecture is also available to watch on the UCL YouTube channel).

Podcast series visual
Understanding climate change through a feminist lens

This episode from Season 2 of the #MadeAtUCL Podcast series is about awareness and the activism it can lead to. Three members of the UCL community discuss the problems they have been confronted by: Hope Oloye, a PhD student whose programme Thinking Black is breaking down barriers to higher education; Virginie Le Masson, a geographer working with women across the world to understand climate change through a feminist lens, and Emilia Molimpakis, a neuroscientist and entrepreneur who is revolutionising mental health care.

Disasters, Climate change, and Violence against Women and Girls

Violence against women and girls and the lack of institutional protection are both exacerbated in the aftermath of a disaster and during crises due to environmental changes. Laura Bello from Imperial College London conducted a short interview with Alyssa Thurston and Meghna Ranganathan, authors of the first systematic review of quantitative and qualitative evidence on violence against women after disaster exposure; and with UCL's Virginie Le Masson, author of Disasters, Climate Change, and Violence Against Women and Girls for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Natural Hazard Science. They discuss how gender-disaggregated data are persistently missing from disaster risk assessments and vulnerability analyses of climate change impacts.

 

Latest publications

Disasters, Climate Change, and Violence Against Women and Girls. Le Masson, V. (2022) Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Natural Hazard Science. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199389407.013.393

Gender in the Climate-Conflict Nexus: “Forgotten” Variables, Alternative Securities, and Hidden Power Dimensions. Ide, T., Ensor, M. O., Le Masson, V. & Kozak, S. (2021) Climate Change and Security, Politics and Governance Vol 9, No 4.

How violence against women and girls undermines resilience to climate risks in Chad. Le Masson, V., Benoudji, C., Reyes, S. S., & Bernard, G. (2019). Disasters, 43, S245-S270.

Further resources

Understanding Climate Change through Gender Relations. Buckingham, S. and Le Masson, V. (2017). Routledge: London. Link to book.

Ending violence against children while addressing the global climate crisis. Pereznieto, P., Rivett, J., Le Masson, V. (2020). ODI: London.

Disasters and violence against women and girls: can disasters shake social norms and power relations? Le Masson, V., Lim, S., Budimir, M. & Selih Podboj, J. (2016) ODI: London.