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Gender and Environment

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Course Type Course Code No. Of Credits
Foundation Elective SHE2ED330 4

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course introduces students to feminist perspectives of looking at human-environment relations and to approaches that theorise the relationship between gender, identities and environment in the global South. The course will underline the role of social identities (caste, class, ethnicity), and configurations of power and subjectivity in the fields of environmental politics, resource politics and governance. Building on the potential and limits of ecofeminist scholarship, it aims to deploy recent feminist political ecology approaches to rural and urban communities and their relationships with land, water, forests and non-human animals. The course will critically examine mainstream policy, state and civil society interventions that seek to build gender equity and empowerment within development and environmental projects.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

To understand debates regarding gendered representations of nature, and women’s association with environment in history and public culture.

  • To critically examine the role of ecofeminist theory and practice in shaping environmental politics, environmental policies and women’s movements in the global South.
  • To understand how gender roles, social identities and subjectivities shape access, ownership and use of natural resources, such as land, forests and water, within households and communities.
  • To critically examine the potential and outcomes of inclusion of gender concerns in environmental policy and governance.

 

LEARNING OUTCOMES

On the successful of completion of this course, students will be able to:

  • Articulate the workings of gender in society and address issues related to gender inequality, justice and discrimination.
  • Demonstrate knowledge of key theorists, thinkers like Judith Butler, Bourdieu and Michel Foucault and theoretical frameworks related to environment and society.
  • Demonstrate the conceptual linkages between gender, social identities and use, ownership and governance of natural resources in the Global South.
  • Critically analyse environmental and natural resource laws, policies and programmes through the lens of gender and feminist political ecology.

COURSE STRUCTURE

Unit

Title

Module

Title

I

Introduction

1

Conceptualising Gender

 

 

2

Social Identities

II

Beginnings

3

Ecofeminism

 

 

4

Interrogating Ecofeminism

III

Intersectional and Political Economy Approaches

5

Land and Property

 

 

6

Water, Forests and Commons

IV

New Directions: Feminist Political Ecology

7

Epistemology

 

 

8

Subjectivity

 

 

9

Environmentality

 

 

10

Masculinities

 

 

11

Non-human animals

 

 

12

Affect and Care

ASSESSMENTS

Assessment No.

Weight

Mode

1

10%

Classroom Participation (Continuous Assessment)

2

20%

Take Home Essay

3

30%

In-class Individual Presentations

4

40%

Take Home Summative Essay

 

INDICATIVE READINGS

  • Agarwal, Bina. (1992). The Gender and Environment Debate: Lessons from India, Feminist Studies, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 119—158.
  • Agarwal, Bina. (2001). Participatory Exclusions, Community Forestry, and Gender: An Analysis for South Asia and a Conceptual Framework, World Development, Vol. 29, No. 10, pp. 1623—1648.
  • Aiyadurai, A., Arka Chattopadhyay and Nishaant Choksi (Edited). (2023). Ecological Entanglements: Affect, Embodiment and Ethics of Care. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan Pvt Ltd.
  • Elliott, K. (2016). Caring masculinities: Theorizing an emerging concept, Men and Masculinities, 19, pp. 240—259.
  • Govindrajan, Radhika. (2018). Animal Intimacies: Interspecies Relatedness in India’s Central Himalayas (Chapters 1 and 2). Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 1—61.
  • Gururani, Shubhra. (2002). Forests of Pleasure and Pain: Gendered practices of labour and livelihood in the forests of the Kumaon Himalayas, India, Gender, Place and Culture, 9(3), pp. 229—243.
  • Leach, Melissa. (2007). Earth Mother Myths and Other Ecofeminist Fables: How a Strategic Notion Rose and Fell, Development and Change, 38(1), pp. 67—85
  • Lorber, Judith. (1994). Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender, in Paradoxes of Gender. New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 13—36.
  • Merchant, Carolyn. (1980). The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (Chapters 1, 5 and 7). San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers.
  • Mies, Maria and Vandana Shiva. (2014). Ecofeminism (Chapters 1, 4 and 5). London: Zed Books.
  • Shreshtha, Gitta, D. Joshi, F. Clement. (2019). Masculinities and hydropower in India: a feminist political ecology perspective, International Journal of the Commons, Vol. 13(1), pp. 130—152.
  • Singh, Neera M. (2013). The affective labour of growing forests and the becoming of environmental subjects: Rethinking environmentality in Odisha, India, Geoforum, pp. 1—10
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