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11. Why Gender Matters, Why Women Matter
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231 chapter eleven Why Gender Matters, Why Women Matter Lisa Gezon As noted in the introduction to this book, it is timely to acknowledge gender as it pertains to sustainability, particularly in macro-level issues such as global warming and globalization, where the voices of women (or any actual people) are often ignored in studies of deforestation, soil degradation, sanitation, or other more immediate livelihood issues. While anthropologists have long identified the effects of globalization on people (e.g., Tsing 1993; Ong 1999) and have begun identifying on-the-ground effects of global warming (Strauss and Orlove 2003; Baer and Singer 2008; Crate and Nuttall 2009), gender dimensions of globalization, particularly regarding environmental sustainability, have received less attention (but see Padilla et al. 2007; Gunewardena and Kingsolver 2008). Since the dawn of the discipline, anthropologists have recognized that people do not live in undifferentiated communities. Classic studies of marriage and kinship noted differences based on lineage and age categories, for example. Feminist scholars in the 1970s introduced new ways of analyzing gender as one of the main sources of differentiation and a critical basis for stratification within communities (Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974; Reiner 1975). Scholars such as Karen Sacks (1974) pointed out that gender difference provides a framework for assigning access to and control over important social and physical resources. The recognition of women’s considerable contributions to subsistence, combined with their relative lack of political status, spurred criticism across the social sciences of Western economic development projects, where women’s contributions had been ignored and their participation in projects not sought (Boserup 1970). 232 • LisaGezon Unfortunately, the criticism of ignoring women in development projects has not resulted in a transformation of the field of development studies. The critique has had to be continually reintroduced, as the introduction points out so well in its tracing of the emergence of multiple and sequential women/gender and development paradigms. This book provides a contemporary iteration of the well-worn but necessary call for the inclusion of gender in analyses of development and sustainability. Not only does this volume put out a reminder to heed gender, it also engages in contemporary theoretical and topical discussions that push gender and sustainability scholarship to a new level. In this concluding chapter, I discuss the relevance of gender and sustainability to globalization, considering the relationship between local and global spaces. I also address why emphasis has been placed on focusing on women per se in a discussion of gender relations, particularly considering the dual patterns of women’s vulnerability to ecological and economic downturns and of their proactive adaptations to it. Globalization and Sustainability Anthropologists have deconstructed the purported tendency of globalization to bring about homogeneous cultural and economic change (Hannerz 1989; Appadurai 1990). The widening gap between the rich and poor lays the framework for radically different experiences of and responses to new forms of global flows of information and capital. James Ferguson (2006) referred to the idea of “global shadows” in identifying spaces on the margins of the system, where people can only dream about having gainful employment in a country with a developed transportation, communication , and social services infrastructure. The lack of these resources have led to countless localized adaptations, manifest in a fusion of political, economic, and cultural strategies (Comaroff and Comaroff 1993). These processes of globalization have effects on the environment, as well as on people. Almost without exception these changes have resulted in environmental degradation. The very concept of sustainability, however , implies that this end is not inevitable. To discuss sustainability is to imagine a world where change does not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their resource needs. This is a discussion of hope for both human and environmental well-being. It calls attention to the need to engage proactively in order to bring this into being and to shape the outcome of globally influenced local processes. It recognizes the agency [54.225.56.41] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 12:23 GMT) Why Gender Matters, Why Women Matter • 233 of policy-makers, local people acting on them, and scholars like ourselves calling for measures to bring social and environmental sustainability into being. It is in this context that understanding gender relations on the ground becomes a critical link to potential outcomes of interventions. Levels of Analysis and Method Throughout her work, Anna Tsing (1993, 2000, 2005) has noted that what we refer to as global is not a top-down project but is coproduced across...