The environmental justice movement was inspired by various sources all over the world. The Europeans, for example, used Marxian thinking for class hierarchy while none western nations criticized colonialism yet civil right movement preceded it in the US(Keller, 2011). Environmental justice originated from the struggles of the colored and low-income earners against unequal ecological burden in the US in the 1970s and 80. On racial progress and civil activism, it was used to refer to the racial and ethnic inequalities about environmental hazards like flooding, pollution, toxic waste and pollution and the exclusion of minority groups in decision making and use of national environmental policies. In the current context, the term environment was redefined to imply a place where people leave, work and play (Loh, 2012). Advocates of environmental justice started to concentrate on issues of equity or equities. Three broad categories of equity emerged, i.e., procedural which is concerned with the non-discriminatory manner of fairness on the use of rules, regulations, enforcement of environmental policies, and evaluation criteria. Geographical equity is involved with the location of the community and their exposure t0o environmental hazards, discriminatory land use and noxious facilities. Social equity translates to the use of sociological factors including race, ethnicity, culture, class, political power, lifestyle in environmental decision making. The movement has managed to unite diverse social minority groups like the Hispanics, African Americans, Native Americans and immigrants including academics and others.
Statement of the issue
The principal of environmental justice has their roots in the efforts of Native Americans to access land rights in the time of colonization. Similar claims were also brought forward by the Africans Americans during slavery. Environmental justice recognizes the disparities in people regarding cost and benefit distribution implying that the concept is a call for equality. The foundation of this call is that all humans are equal and therefore should be treated as such. A discussion on the subject is thus a discussion on social justice, its meaning as well as implications. According to Keller (2011), the theory that best describes environmental justice is deontological. According to this approach, every human being has inviolable rights and intrinsic value. Therefore people's rights to their fundamental liberties and inequality can only be justified if it benefits those with limited access to primary freedoms. Environmental injustice, in this case, occurs when a social group is exposed to a disproportionate burden on the cost of industrialization compared to the broader population, and the group would be better off without manufacturing. Based on this argument, environmental justice can be related to the distribution of cost and benefits as well as the capacity that an individual has to influence the decision of a society.
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Previously, race and income have received substantial attention with regards to the environmental injustice. Recently, there has been an observable change towards other categories including gender. According to Bell (2016), gender is a term employed to demonstrate that sex inequality is not as a result of anatomic an physiological differences that are inherent in men and women but by the unequal as well as inequitable treatment that is socially accorded to them. The concept is seen as diverse and feminist are advocating for the intersection of gender-based oppression that locates gender in the context of class, ethnicity, race, and citizenship including other socially related categories that interact to shape the lives of women and their social identity.
Different studies have been conducted on the gender issue of environmentalism in the academic field of eco-feminism and feminist environmentalism and feminist political ecology. Such studies deal with women's environments and environmentalism, but they slightly vary in their emphasis. Eco-feminism holds that the domination of women under patriarchy is related to the command of nature. Feminist environmentalists are of the opinion that women undergo environmental degradation in gender-related ways. Feminist political ecology dwells on gendered ecological politics and grassroots activism. Despite the high number of studies into women and environment that researchers on environmental justice can rely on, there have been few publications on gender from the EJ research. The potential reason as to why the situation is like that is because women are not found in segregated geographical locations. The experience of women on EJ may be at the household level or body and not on a broader scale. Therefore, social, spatial distributional analysis a dominant methodology in the EJ field does not outrightly identify environmental injustice against women. A feminist or gendered perspective also is unavailable from EJ policy, practice as well as activism. Gender issues are usually not articulated by the concerned individuals, and at times they can even be suppressed (Bell, 2016).
Need for gender perspective in environmental justice
A feminist perspective is required in ecological justice because women live and work in conditions that are not environmentally adequate and therefore affecting their health. Similarly, men can also experience the same burden when they are exposed to such environments as a result of their occupation. The environmental deprivation and disadvantage that women are exposed to go unnoticed usually. Ecological justice contributes to improved public health as evidence shows that health inequities and injustices across different groups can be attributed to environmental inequalities as well as prejudice in the various categories. When ecological justice is linked to the debate on public health, the outcome is radical by re-individualizing the mainstream public health issues that focus on faulty genes and poor lifestyles as the primary cause of ill health and engaging in operations, pharmaceuticals and individual lifestyle choices as the solutions. In essences, it focuses on a contextualized holistic and preventive approach to health as a result of a healthy environment. It does not dismiss the conventional way of analyzing ill health but contributes to it as environmental harm is taken as a risk multiplier (Bell, 2016).
Women have traditionally been the leaders of environmental injustice as men had vested interest in the institutions mandated to manage ecological harm. Individuals who are not adequately represented are quick to point out that the system is dysfunctional or not working for them and would instead challenge it. Women in environmental justice movement don't assert a gender dimension to articulate their issues. There is a lack of awareness of gender and equality in ecological institutions and activist groups. Female activists are not considering the gender perspective of their work. Likewise, female liberation organizations and gender academics have not taken a firm stance on environmental issues. Such can be attributed to the fact that environmentalists have not taken up the issue of feminism as well as women’s right. A gender dimension to environmental justice is not well articulated in policy as well as activists circles and remains marginal in the EJ literature.
Environmental injustice is caused by several factors including power inequalities discrimination, industrialization, market dynamics, lifestyle discourse, and capitalism. On gender issues, there are arguments that biological reasons lead to gender differential. There are also tendencies to display females as different to males or more vulnerable and needing protection. Environmental and social causes might explain the vulnerability of women (Bell, 2016).
Materialist and ecofeminism
Women are usually on the lead in environmentalism of the marginalized despite the social challenges that make it difficult for them to be heard. Environmental justice movement is still trying to come to terms with feminism an old and successful campaign. Women are not hesitant to challenge the political system, armed violence, and local tyrants in their quest to protect natural resources that they depend on. Women, therefore, protect their livelihoods, culture, sacred places, and holy places. According to essentialist ecofeminism, men and women are distinct as a result of their biological characteristics and women are assumed to be biologically closer to nature as opposed to men (Weiss, 2015).
Despite being excluded from participating in environmental struggles, women institute, lead and organize them and interact with men in conflicts while in other instances they confront men. Sometimes, men have leading roles in the struggles and women make up the backbone of such movement. The part played by women in environmental conflicts can enhance the achievement of ecological justice while challenging the domination of men. Women who take an active role in environmental justice often redefine their position in their culture and test the global economy (Veuthey & Gerber, 2010, 2012).
Economic participation
Globally women are poorer than men as there are differences in the salaries paid to each category despite both having similar qualifications. Similarly, disabled men earn higher than women, and senior women are also less privileged than their men counterparts. In Australia, single senior women have also been identified to live below poverty line. Women are disadvantaged due to two reasons. One is the burden of caring for the children as well as the elderly or the sick members of the family. The second goal is the segregation of women into low paying jobs the two factors are interrelated and are further influenced by other issues like women being single parents and their tendency to live longer (Weiss, 2015).
Higher poverty levels in women imply that they are unable to access the resources that wo0uld enable them to adapt to climate change (Aguilar, 2009). Women will, therefore, be unable to make expensive adaptive measures to cope with the changes like retrofitting their homes to counter the effect of heat waves. Urban planning is also another issue where women-headed households are likely to exist in areas with traffic congestion as well as industrial pollution. Low-income settlement areas are also expected to be more polluted with most factories living in such localities compared to those found in affluent areas. Food security is also another issue that is affecting women as they cannot afford healthy foods (Weiss, 2015).
Housing
Women are unable to find safe, affordable housing. In the urban places, the working class and the middle to upper-class suburbs have women with different housing needs compared to men. Such women may opt to live in rented houses or public units or even be homeless. Such women may be in prostitution or are migrants or refugees performing odd jobs. Women in the rural areas also have different needs with the majority of them being exposed to high rates of pollution and noise from traffic as they are unable to buy property in less degraded areas. Women are also likely to live in fuel poverty and are therefore exposed to the effects of the harsh weather in winter (Weiss, 2015).
Women headed houses are likely to be low income, and single parents are likely to live in rented houses that lack the essential amenities, are overcrowded, and the most significant portion of their income is spent on housing. There are also possibilities of such women paying high utility bills as there are no regulations on the same. Homeless individuals are also exposed to the adverse effects of climate change (Weiss, 2015).
References
Bell, K. (2016). Bread and Roses: A Gender Perspective on Environmental Justice and Public Health. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 13 (10), 1005. doi:10.3390/ijerph13101005
Keller D. (2011). Environmental justice in encyclopedia of global justice by Den Chatterjee
Loh P. (2012). Environmental justice in encyclopedia of immigrants health by Sana Loue and Martha Sajatovic.
Unger N.C., (2008). The Role of Gender in Environmental Justice. Environ. Justice. 1:115–119. doi: 10.1089/env.2008.0523
Veuthey, S. & J.-F. Gerber, (2010). Logging conflicts in Southern Cameroon: a feminist, ecological economics perspective. Ecological Economics 70(2): 170-177.
Veuthey, S., and J.-F. Gerber, (2012). Accumulation by dispossession in coastal Ecuador: shrimp farming, local resistance and the gender structure of mobilizations. Global Environmental Change 22(3): 611-622.
Weiss, C. (2015). Women and Environmental Justice: a literature review http://www.genderanddisaster.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Doc-037-Women-and-EJ-Lit-Review.pdf
