Feminist governance and climate change

The importance of gender in environmental research and policy-making is more widely accepted than ever before. Gender and climate change mainstreaming has resulted in the proliferation of national and local action plans, gender-responsive climate financing, and new technologies that explicitly target women. Yet, mainstreaming efforts have not translated into transformations in social, political and economic relations especially for rural women. This chapter maps feminist governance in climate change by drawing on the significance of feminist standpoint epistemology for revealing a foundational disconnect between ‘technical expertise’ reproduced at national and global levels, and women’s everyday knowledge. Because climate change has been framed both as a security and scientific issue, it has concentrated knowledge production and validation within a very narrow and still male-centric model. This in turn leads to piecemeal improvements that fail to reach the most vulnerable and climate-risk exposed populations.