Woman and Global Warming
I finally watched Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth. I'm not a huge Al Gore fan, but I have always been a believer in global warming and an activist for environmental causes. So, this movie didn't have much of an impact on me, other than to remind me of a few things and thoroughly depress me.
One of the things it reminded me about was MADRE's latest newsletter about women and climate change. Essentially, the premise is that women are differentially impacted by the climate change that is presumably caused by global warming. My cat tore up the newsletter, but I think the bulk of the text is here.
One part that especially stuck out in my mind is the burden of finding water. This task in many cultures falls on girls or young women. As water becomes more and more scarce, they're having to travel further to find it, therefore having to drop out of school. Thus, we will have even fewer educated females in the developing world - a very scary prospect considering how little value is already placed on educating young girls in many of those countries.
I find it so interesting to examine the impact this has on women, especially considering we could argue that women are less responsible for the problem than are men. (Yes, I did just write that). With more women being in poverty than men and women all across the world being in more subservient roles, women don't control the technology that has created the problem. Women in some countries can't even drive. And poor women in all countries can hardly afford to use the enough energy sources to come close to matching the affluent of the same country.
The same of course can be said for the developing world at-large, and the impoverished populations of any country, but with women being disproportionately poor on top of being female, it seems they are the most likely to feel the impact of these changes in the short term.
For another very interesting look at Global Warming, check out the November 16 post "If Only Gay Sex Caused Global Warming" by one of my favorite writers at The Peace Train.
That's all for now.
One of the things it reminded me about was MADRE's latest newsletter about women and climate change. Essentially, the premise is that women are differentially impacted by the climate change that is presumably caused by global warming. My cat tore up the newsletter, but I think the bulk of the text is here.
One part that especially stuck out in my mind is the burden of finding water. This task in many cultures falls on girls or young women. As water becomes more and more scarce, they're having to travel further to find it, therefore having to drop out of school. Thus, we will have even fewer educated females in the developing world - a very scary prospect considering how little value is already placed on educating young girls in many of those countries.
I find it so interesting to examine the impact this has on women, especially considering we could argue that women are less responsible for the problem than are men. (Yes, I did just write that). With more women being in poverty than men and women all across the world being in more subservient roles, women don't control the technology that has created the problem. Women in some countries can't even drive. And poor women in all countries can hardly afford to use the enough energy sources to come close to matching the affluent of the same country.
The same of course can be said for the developing world at-large, and the impoverished populations of any country, but with women being disproportionately poor on top of being female, it seems they are the most likely to feel the impact of these changes in the short term.
For another very interesting look at Global Warming, check out the November 16 post "If Only Gay Sex Caused Global Warming" by one of my favorite writers at The Peace Train.
That's all for now.
technorati tags: takebackthetech
posted by Tiger on a Leash at 7:47 PM
2 Comments:
Tiger, thanks for the link to the global warming post.
You probably have a point about how little women are responsibe for energy usage. However I must challenge that, it seems to me that if you only consider hair care, there are blow dryers, curling irons and the like. When the family is altogether, and the showers and bathrooms are in use - the circuit breakers are blowing like fire crackers on the 4th of July.
That's just my observations, not exactly scientific.
I never thought about the ways in which men must use more natural resources than women before - but it's so true: all those air cons and heating systems blasting male-dominated work spaces and corporate offices, all those hi-tech office gyms, all that air-travel... The only piece of equipment I can think of that might, collectively, have a profound affect upon the environment that women might be using more than men, is the ever-inoccuous kettle: boiling the kettle just once uses enough electricity to power the lights of your average residential street for 24hours!
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