Women’s Impact on Environmental Governance

Women's Impact on Environmental Governance: Reclaiming the Commons through Knowledge, Care, and Culture assembles geographically diverse analyses of case studies from around the world to demonstrate how women interact with global drivers of change to create new governance structures, subvert existing governance structures, or adapt their informal structures to reclaim their commons. Drawing upon case studies from Bangladesh, Peru, the United States, Tanzania and Kenya, and Chile, the book's authors address the question: How do women reclaim their culture and resources from the impacts of global change by enacting processes of formal and informal governance? The authors argue that women are essential actors in processes of both environmental and economic governance. Yet, their labor often goes unrecognized as power dynamics between and across genders shape access, control, and care of a resource or property and both state-level policymaking and international development frequently reinforce women's marginalization. However, women's work underpins economic, environmental, and community sustainability and they persist to overcome, subvert, or circumnavigate forms of enclosure in the commons. As both an ode to women's work and a call to policymakers and development agencies to recognize women's labor, this book illustrates how women draw upon knowledge, care, and culture to improve social, economic, and ecological well-being.