Promoting Gender Equity as We Celebrate Earth Day
Apr 20, 2023
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Marisa O. Ensor
Every year on April 22nd, Earth Day marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970. As the awareness of our climate crisis grows, so does our recognition of the intrinsic link between gender equality and humanity’s relationship with the natural environment. Efforts to promote gender equity across generations are increasingly evident in frameworks and programming to combat climate change. The Paris Agreement specifically names “gender equality, empowerment of women and intergenerational equity” as being essential to addressing climate change, and calls for a gender-responsive approach to climate action. There can be no climate justice without an approach that prioritizes the needs and priorities of women and girls, who, in many cases, are more vulnerable to climate impacts. Several organizations are celebrating Earth Day 2023 by launching women-focused initiatives for the protection of the planet.
The Origins of Earth Day
The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970 when Gaylord Nelson, a United States senator from Wisconsin, established it as a way to ensure the inclusion of environmental concerns in the national agenda. Rallies took place across the country and, by the end of the year, the U.S. government had created the Environmental Protection Agency. It was not, however, until April 22nd, 2009 that International Mother Earth Day was celebrated for the first time as an international event instituted by the United Nations General Assembly.
The birth of the modern environmental movement is, nevertheless, more justifiably attributed to Rachel Carson, a marine biologist, conservationist, and writer. Carson sounded the alarm about the impacts of the pesticide DDT on birds in her 1962 bestseller book, Silent Spring. Carson was also the first woman to take and pass the civil service exam for federal employment in 1936, outscoring all applicants and becoming the second woman ever hired by the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources.
Earth Day 1970 would come to provide a voice to this emerging environmental consciousness, helping to put environmental concerns on the front page. Today, Earth Day is the largest secular observance in the world, marked by more than a billion people in 192 countries every year. As promoted by the Earth Day Network, the global organizer of Earth Day, this year’s theme, “Invest in Our Planet”, highlights the importance of dedicating time, resources, and energy to solving climate change and other environmental issues. The role of women and girls in these endeavors is more critical than ever.
Promoting Gender Equality
It is well established that climate change is not gender neutral. Across the world, women and girls depend more on, yet have less access to, the resources needed to build resilience to environmental shocks and stressors. They thus usually experience the most severe impacts of climate change, which amplifies existing gender inequalities and poses unique threats to their livelihoods, health, and safety. Furthermore, gender-based violence is often used to reinforce discriminatory norms that dictate who can participate – and who is excluded – and who can benefit from the control, management, and use of natural resources. Resource scarcity and loss of livelihoods linked to climate change and environmental degradation further exacerbates gender-based violence. Child marriage, survival sex, and other forms of sexual exploitation are also associated with increasing environmental insecurity. In sum, gender inequality and climate change are interconnected.
At the same time, women and girls are not passively experiencing these multiple, compounded threats — they are also at the forefront of finding solutions to address the most pressing crises of biodiversity loss, land degradation, and climate change. Everywhere across the globe, women and girls play key roles in nature conservation, disaster risk reduction, and climate change action. There is growing evidence across sectors, institutions, and scales that involving women in policy development, peacebuilding, and environmental programming leads to more successful and sustained outcomes. As stewards of Earth’s lands, forests, and waters, and users and managers of her natural resources, they are raising their voices for the protection of nature.
Katharine Wilkinson, co-founder of the All We Can Save Project, underscored the vital importance of supporting women’s and girls’ efforts in climate action in her 2018 TED Talk, “How Empowering Women and Girls Can Help Stop Global Warming”. In this talk, viewed over 2 million times, Wilkinson noted that “to address climate change, we must make gender equity a reality. And in the face of a seemingly impossible challenge, women and girls are a fierce source of possibility”. As we look towards Earth Day 2023, we must pay special attention to the intersection of climate and gender justice.
Gender-transformative Initiatives Celebrating Earth Day
The Earth Day Network launched a “Women and the Green Economy” (WAGE) campaign at the UNFCCC 16th Conference of the Parties (COP 16) in Cancun, Mexico in December, 2010. Since then, the Earth Day Network has engaged women in business, government, and non-governmental organizations to be its campaign leaders. WAGE is actively creating a road map for women to join forces, promote their leadership in creating a sustainable green economy, and mitigate climate change. The ultimate goal is to establish a policy agenda and relevant national initiatives that will promote the green economy, secure educational and job training opportunities for women, and channel green investment to benefit women.
Another initiative heeding the Earth Day 2023 exhortation to “Invest in Our Planet” by empowering women is the RISE grants challenge. RISE supports local partnerships between environmental and women’s organizations to address gender-based violence and environment linkages in the context of environmental degradation and climate change. Funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the RISE grants challenge is a direct response to a landmark study by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on Gender-based Violence and Environment Linkages: The Violence of Inequality. This study found that gender-based violence is being used across environmental contexts as a means to control the access to, use of, rights over, and management roles relating to environmental and climate action. Currently managed by IUCN, the RISE grants challenge is housed within the Gender-Based Violence and Environment Linkages Center (GBV-ENV Center), a strategic action center under the Advancing Gender in the Environment (AGENT) partnership between USAID and IUCN.
In celebration of Earth Day 2023, USAID and IUCN announced the five winners of the RISE grants challenge at an event held in Washington, DC on April 18. With support from this joint initiative, five projects across Central America, Eastern and Southern Africa, and Southeast Asia are addressing gender-based violence in the context of environmental conservation, resource use in climate-vulnerable settings, and the protection of Indigenous women environmental human rights defenders.
Making Every Day, Earth Day
Fifty-three years after the first Earth Day, and on the heels of Women's History Month, it is fitting to link gender equality with environmental protection, as so many of those working to protect the Earth are women and girls, including Indigenous women, whose courageous efforts must be celebrated and supported. Today, the fight for a greener future continues with increasing urgency as the ravages of climate change become increasing apparent, underscoring the importance of recognizing the inseparable link between gender and the environment.
Achieving gender equality represents the best opportunity we have to address many of the most pressing challenges of our time, including climate change. Strengthening the resilience of communities and societies requires the full and effective participation of women in all their diversity. As Katharine Wilkinson eloquently put it “as members in the community of life, our [women’s] purpose is to be part of Earth’s healing”.
Dr. Marisa O. Ensor is an applied environmental and legal anthropologist currently based at Georgetown University’s Justice and Peace Studies Program. She is also the Chair of the Environmental Peacebuilding Association’s Gender Interest Group (“EnPAx-GIG”).