3.2 Theoretical Framework
3.1.1 Feminist Political Ecology
The recent attention given to women’s significance and contributions to economies, culture, and politics has witnessed a convergence of interests in issues of environment, gender, and development, both at the global and local levels. Different scholarly schools of thoughts posit different views pertaining to how gender influences the way people relate to and are affected by issues of environmental change. Ecofeminist scholars such as Wangari (2007) take an essentialist position, asserting that women’s identification with the environment stems from nature. Such an essentialist assertion implies that women are naturally (sic) more connected to the environment than men, and hence, anything that affects the environment poses a greater impact on women than men. While the latter part is true, the former part of the assertion may
be problematic. To this end there are other ecofeminist scholars such as Mark Stoddart and David Tindall (see Stoddart and Tindall, 2011), who assert that women’s connection to nature is merely a social construct adopted by the patriarchal institutions and dominant western culture to foster oppression of women (see also Rocheleau & Thomas-Slayter, 2013). Studies on gender and climate change adaptation, for example Vincent et al (2010), Babagura (2014) and Resurrección (2019) also establish the interconnectedness between social construction of gendered roles and women’s heightened vulnerability.
Feminist Environmentalism, as advocated by Argawal (1991), cited in Rocheleau, Thomas- Slayter & Wangari (1996, p.3) emphasises that women’s interests in nature and some natural resources stems from the different daily roles that women perform every day. For instance, in some societies, differentiated gendered roles depict an essentialist view of women as those responsible for certain duties such as cooking, fetching water, and general house care. In the same vein, social feminism20 believes that women’s connection to the environment has to be with the political economy of production and reproduction, where male and female roles differ in the production economy. For instance, women—who are mostly child bearers—are seen to be natural nurturers. Feminist post-structuralists, for example, Harding (1986), explain that gender differentiated experiences of environmental change is a result of the manifestation of the “situated knowledge regarding different dimensions of identity”, for instance, differences in gender, race, class, age group, and ethnicity (cited in Rocheleau, Thomas-Slayter &
Wangari, 1996, p.4).
Feminist post-structuralists and feminist political ecologists’ perspective on gender, environment and development are related. Feminist political ecologists emphasise that gendered division of rights, responsibilities, and environmental risks manifest in how women, especially women—and especially local women from rural areas—experience the impacts of environmental degradation differently from men. For feminist political ecologists, these differences in experience are a result of inequities in social and political structures. Feminist political ecology forms the theoretical framework for this study. It will be explicated in detail.
But before exploring what feminist political ecology entails, it suffices to briefly mention what political ecology, of whose Feminist Political Ecology is a subfield, is concerned with.
20 See example the work following works Social Feminism: A Strategy for Women’s Movement by Both et al (1972) and other women’s socialist organisation such as Radical Women (https://www.radicalwomen.org/); and the Freedom Socialist Party (https://www radicalwomen.org/).
Minch (2011, p.24) describes Political ecology as the study of “the intersection and relationship between the political, broadly understood, and environmental and ecological phenomena”. Put differently, political ecology studies the interrelationship between politics, culture, and nature or the environment. According to Rocheleau, Thomas-Slayter & Wangari (1996, p4), political ecology is concerned with the decision-making processes, and the social, political, and economic factors that shape the formulation and implementation of environmental policies and practices. This explanation sheds light on the assumption of this study which is that political, economic, social, and cultural forces affect, and are affected by, ecological and environmental concerns. This study aims to explore the complex relations between environmental issues (specifically floods and other related natural disasters), politics, culture and other social dynamics, through analysing how these factors influence access and control over resources, and the implications this has on people’s livelihoods. Robbins (2004, p.116) opines that political ecology—as a discipline and as a theoretical lens—has a rich base of theories for researches, ranging from constructivist and post-structuralism, by providing ideologies, discourses and understandings for deconstructing environmental realities, and the ways in which ‘ideas and narratives about nature and society are mobilised’. Bryan & Bailey (1997) point out the postulations of political ecology as follows:
• One, environmental changes or disasters do not affect society members homogeneously: political, social, and economic differences account for unequal distribution of costs and benefits and,
• Two, the unequal distribution mentioned above unavoidably reinforces or reduces pre- existing social and economic inequalities in the society.
Feminist Political Ecology is a subfield of Political Ecology. Dianne Rochleau (1996, p.4) describes Feminist Political Ecology as “a feminist approach to political ecology, where gender becomes a main category analysis in relation to understanding how decision-making practices and socio-political forces influence environmental laws and issues, as well as access to and control over resources”. Feminist Political Ecology serves to incorporate issues of gender into Political Ecology scholarship by analysing how the social construction of gendered relations, including socio-political and socio-economic factors, interacts with issues of environmental concerns to disproportionally disadvantage women. The richness of using Feminist Political Ecology as an analytical lens is in the fact that it also focuses on racially diverse societies, which could range from rural to urban or industrial to agrarian societies to
understand the gender dimension seen in the acquisition and control over land resources. It incorporates ideas from cultural ecology21, political ecology (Rocheleau 1996) and political economy22. Feminist political ecology emphasises the role of gender as a critical variable in shaping resource access and control, and interacting with class, caste, race, culture, and ethnicity to shape processes of ecological change and the struggle of men and women to sustain ecologically viable livelihoods.
Feminist Political Ecology was popularised in the 1990’s by Dianne Rocheleau and her colleagues from Clarke University, USA. In the book, Feminist Political Ecology: Global Issues and Local Experiences, edited by Rocheleau and colleagues in 1996, the authors illustrate how certain issues of environmental degradation are gendered. Especially, it showed how certain environmental challenges had more negative effects on women than men (Rocheleau et al 1996). This book offers a refreshing perspective to political ecology, as it introduces gender as a critical variable thats interact with race, class, culture, etc. to shape how people get access to resources and other assets in order to sustain viable livelihoods during environmental change (Rocheleau et al 1996, p.4).
The application of feminist political ecology has drawn attention to the ways in which social, structural, and political factors interact with issues of the natural environment to shape women’s vulnerability. For instance, recent application of feminist political ecology perspectives by scholars include Resurrección (2019), who employs the perspective to analyse how everyday gender relations influence the differential experiences and vulnerabilities of women and men to environmental changes in the Hindu Kush Himalaya. Gender differences, feminisation of roles and responsibilities are products of social constructs which can change depending on contexts: culture, race, class, geographical location. These different categories are also dynamic, capable of changing in line with shifts in governance and social structures.
By regarding gender as dynamic, feminist political ecology therefore seems to deconstruct the traditional binary construction of gender that classifies men as dominant, powerful, and visible while women are weak, passive, and invisible. As noted by Clement et al (2019), such construction of gender is caused by complex historical processes that are shaped by economic,
21 Julian Steward is the main proponent of cultural ecology, a theory which proposes “that cultures interact with their environmental settings… to allow people to best pursue their livelihoods (See https://www.britannica.com/topic/cultural-ecology)
22 Political economy can be understood as the study of how a country—the public’s household—is managed or governed, taking into account both political and economic factors (See https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-economy
social, and cultural institutions and which deeply inform social, political, and economic decisions.
In most of our societies today, gender is a determining variable that shapes access to resources.
This research explores local women's experiences of, and adaptation to, the environmental flood disaster in eThekwini municipality. It assumes that these experiences are shaped by social, structural, and political factors within the municipality. According to MacGregor (2010, p. 225), people's responses (adaptation) to real-life manifestations of climate change are shaped by social and political factors. This study will focus on the ways in which social inequalities craft and are crafted in relation to flood disaster.