Empowerment and the Environment

During my lunch hour at work, I get weird looks. Sometimes, someone leans over to me and asks, “What is that you’re eating with?”. I simply say, “It’s a wooden spork – a spoon cross fork. I carry around with me everywhere I go and it’s made of bamboo. If I toss this over my shoulder, I know it won’t be harming the planet”. They stare as I continue to use my bamboo spork, then I pull out my metal straw and beeswax wraps.

Sustainability and feminism are rarely conceptualised as related, but I am finding that the two are becoming increasingly intertwined as climate change and sustainability are being brought to the forefront of personal and political discourse.

I think Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said it best when she stated, “a feminist is a person who believes in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.”

Hence, feminism and sustainable living go hand in hand. The United Nations Bruntland Report in 1987 defined sustainable development as that which “ensures that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. If you are practicing sustainable ideals, you are practicing feminism. The connection between climate change and feminism is more obvious in developing nations where the impacts of climate change affect women significantly more than men. Big nations, such as the United States, Australia and China, are responsible for most of the damage caused to the global environment, but it is developing countries that suffer the negative impacts of climate change in the most detrimental manner. Agriculture and food security, as well as water resources, energy, and human health are some of the many areas of society that are suffering due to our environmental irresponsibility.

Climate change interacts with the social and political barriers faced by women in developing nations. Girls are notably less likely to get an education due to gender norms and therefore have less job opportunities as women, which leads them to engage in lower paid, agricultural-based labor to support themselves and their families. Unfortunately, these are the very careers that are threatened by extreme climate events and random changes to seasonal cycles. Further, it is most often the role of women to secure water, food and fuel for basic necessities such as cooking and heating, for their communities. These women, mostly from rural areas, face the greatest disadvantages of climate change. Women in developed nations also face barriers to equal opportunity and resources based on our gender – the gender-wage gap ensures that we accumulate less personal resources than our male counterparts. Pursuing sustainable living is part of women’s fight not just for economic, social and political development and empowerment, but empowerment that isn’t then going to disappear with the deterioration of our natural environment. Society has evolved to set girls up for failure as women, socially, politically, economically and environmentally.

However, women are simultaneously situated in society as the most effective agents of change in climate change mitigation, disaster reduction, and adaption strategies. A strong working knowledge of environmental management, especially found in indigenous communities, paired with women’s role as administrator of natural and household resources, means women are able to contribute greatly to changing our environmental reality in developing nations.

This power to lead the redirection of our environmental management can be mimicked in our context. With that in mind, I chose to start to try to live a more sustainable life about a year ago. I stopped succumbing to fast fashion and took a moment to think about where my clothes came from, who they were made by, and whether they were sustainably sourced. ‘Good on You’ is an app and database where clothing companies are rated on their compliance with labour, environment and animal welfare standards. These changes are not rocket science, but things we are told to be mindful of from a young age without necessarily being told why. So if you live a pretty decent life with a house, clothes, fresh water, food, and accessible transport, consider this a luxury. Most people around the world are not able to afford such luxuries, and our lifestyles may be making these resources even more scarce. I think we all need to turn off the lights, walk instead of drive, take shorter showers, think before we buy and be more grateful.

As I am typing this, Earth Overshoot Day - the date when we have used more from nature than our planet can renew in an entire year – has already passed on the 1ST of August, and a quarter of the year is still left. I think the scariest part about sustainability is that we live in a world that is pretending we have an infinite amount of resources. It is a constant psychological battle trying to make the right choices while being bombarded with new, unsustainable trends. It is exhausting to filter everything out and see what is happening around you realistically. The biggest driver of change for myself is that I believe that every person deserves respect and an equal opportunity to lead a satisfying life. Knowing that people are trying their best is enough to hope for a better future for all living things, and to me, that is what it means to be a feminist.

Achintha Liyanage