Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T22:55:44.595Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sourcing Women's Ecological Knowledge: The Worry of Epistemic Objectification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Rebecca Tuvel
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that although it is important to attend to injustices surrounding women's epistemic exclusions, it is equally important to attend to injustices surrounding women's epistemic inclusions. Partly in response to the historical exclusion of women's knowledge, there has been increasing effort among first‐world actors to seek out women's knowledge. This trend is apparent in efforts to mainstream gender in climate change negotiation. Here, one is told that women's superior knowledge about how to adapt to climate change makes them “poised to help solve and overcome this daunting challenge.” Pulling from the work of Miranda Fricker, I argue that such claims risk epistemically objectifying women. To illuminate the risk of women's epistemic objectification in climate change discourse, I offer a feminist analysis of current efforts to seek women's environmental knowledge, cautioning throughout that such efforts must reflect just epistemic relations.

Type
Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , Spring 2015 , pp. 319 - 336
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agrawal, Arun. 2002. Indigenous knowledge and the politics of classification. International Social Science Journal 54 (173): 287–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andreotti, Vanessa. 2007. An ethical engagement with the other: Gayatri Spivak on education. Critical Literacy: Theories and Practices 1 (1): 69–79.Google Scholar
Arora‐Jonsson, Seema. 2014. Forty years of gender research and environmental policy: Where do we stand? Women's Studies International Forum. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277539514000326 (accessed October 16, 2014).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Behning, Ute, Pascual, Amparo Serrano, and European Trade Union Institute. 2001. Gender mainstreaming in the European employment strategy. Brussels: European Trade Union Institute.Google Scholar
Braidotti, Rosi. 1993. Embodiment, sexual difference, and the nomadic subject. Hypatia 8 (1): 1–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clay, Rebecca. 2003. Speaking up: Women's voices in environmental decision making. Environmental Health Perspectives 111 (1): A34–A37.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Code, Lorraine. 1991. What can she know?: Feminist theory and the construction of knowledge. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Code, Lorraine. 2006. Ecological thinking: The politics of epistemic location. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Code, Lorraine. 2008. Advocacy, negotiation, and the politics of unknowing. Southern Journal of Philosophy 46 (S1): 32–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cuomo, Chris. 2011. Climate change, vulnerability, and responsibility. Hypatia 26 (4): 690–714.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daly, Mary. 2005. Gender mainstreaming in theory and practice. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society 12 (3): 433–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dankelman, Irene. 2010. Gender and climate change: An introduction. London: Earthscan Publications.Google Scholar
Dankelman, Irene, and Davidson, Joan. 1991. Land: Women at the centre of the food crisis. In Women and the environment: A reader, ed. Sontheimer, Sally. London: Earthscan.Google Scholar
Dogra, Nandita. 2011. The mixed metaphor of “third world woman”: Gendered representations by international development NGOs. Third World Quarterly 32 (2): 333–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dotson, Kristie. 2008. In search of Tanzania: Are effective epistemic practices sufficient for just epistemic practices? Southern Journal of Philosophy 46 (S1): 52–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, Ann. 1998. Resisting the veil of privilege: Building bridge identities as an ethico‐politics of global feminisms. Hypatia 13 (3): 95–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glazebrook, Trish. 2011. Women and climate change: A case‐study from northeast Ghana. Hypatia 26 (4): 762–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grasswick, Heidi. 2011. Liberatory epistemology and the sharing of knowledge: Querying the norms. In Feminist epistemology and philosophy of science, ed. Grasswick, Heidi. New York: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hannan, Caroyln. 2009. Gender mainstreaming climate change. Kvinder Køn & Forskning 3–4: 46–51.Google Scholar
Hennessy, Rosemary. 1993. Women's lives/feminist knowledge: Feminist standpoint as ideology critique. Hypatia 8 (1): 14–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
International Fund for Agricultural Development. 2014. The gender advantage: Women on the front line of climate change. http://www.ifad.org/climate/resources/advantage/gender.pdf. (accessed September 3, 2014).Google Scholar
Jacquot, Sophie. 2010. The paradox of gender mainstreaming: Unanticipated effects of new modes of governance in the gender equality domain. West European Politics 33 (1): 118–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kapoor, Ilan. 2008. The postcolonial politics of development. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kerr, Joanne. 2004. Gender mainstreaming: Can it work for women's rights? Association for Women's Rights and Development Bulletin 3.Google Scholar
Lane, Ruth, and McNaught, Rebecca. 2009. Building gendered approaches to adaptation in the Pacific. Gender & Development 17 (1): 67–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Harper. 1960. To kill a mockingbird. London: William Heinemann.Google Scholar
Maggio, Joe. 2007. Can the subaltern be heard?: Political theory, translation, representation, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 32 (4): 419–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Medina, José. 2013. The epistemology of resistance: Gender and racial oppression, epistemic injustice, and the social imagination. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meier, Petra, and Celis, Karen. 2011. Sowing the seeds of its own failure: Implementing the concept of gender mainstreaming. Social Politics 18 (4): 469–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mies, Maria. 1986. Patriarchy and accumulation on a world scale. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 2003. “Under western eyes” revisited: Feminist solidarity through anticapitalist struggles. Signs 28 (2): 499–535.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neimanis, Astrida. 2001. Gender mainstreaming in practice: A handbook. New York: United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).Google Scholar
Pohlhaus, Gaile Jr. 2013. Discerning the primary epistemic harm in cases of testimonial injustice. Social Epistemology 28 (2): 99–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rabeler, Katrina. 2013. Women's knowledge: Three reasons we won't solve climate change without it. Yes Magazine, September 20. http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/three-reasons-why-women-are-essential-to-solving-climate-change (accessed September 3, 2014).Google Scholar
Rao, Aruna, and Kelleher, David. 2005. Is there life after gender mainstreaming? Gender & Development 13 (2): 57–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Resurreccion, Bernadette. 2011. The gender and climate debate: More of the same or new pathways of thinking and doing? Asia Security Initiative Policy Paper 10: 213–35.Google Scholar
Sandilands, Catriona. 1999. The good‐natured feminist: Ecofeminism and the quest for democracy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Seager, Joni, and Hartmann, Betsy. 2005. Mainstreaming gender in environmental assessment and early warning. United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). http://www.unep.org/dewa/Portals/67/pdf/Mainstreaming_Gender.pdf (accessed September 3, 2014).Google Scholar
Skinner, Emmeline. 2011. Gender and climate change: Overview report. Sussex: Institute of Development Studies.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri. 1996. “Woman” as theatre: United Nations conference on women, Beijing 1995. Radical philosophy 75: 2–4.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri. 1999. A critique of postcolonial reason: Toward a history of the vanishing present. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tolhurst, Rachel, Leach, Beryl, Price, Janet, Robinson, Jude, Ettore, Elizabeth, Samuel, Alex Scott, Kilonzo, Nduku, Louis, P., Sabuni, Steve Robertson, and Kapilashrami, Anuj. 2012. Intersectionality and gender mainstreaming in international health: Using a feminist participatory action research process to analyse voices and debates from the global south and north. Social Science & Medicine 74 (11): 1825–32.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
True, Jacqui, and Parisi, Laura. 2012. Gender mainstreaming strategies in international governance. In Feminist strategies in international governance, ed. Caglar, Gülay, Prügl, Elisabeth, and Zwingel, Susanne. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tuana, Nancy. 2004. Coming to understand: Orgasm and the epistemology of ignorance. Hypatia 19 (1): 194–232.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tuana, Nancy. 2013. Gendering climate knowledge for justice: Catalyzing a new research agenda. In Research, action and policy: Addressing the gendered impacts of climate change, ed. Alston, Margaret and Whittenbury, Kerri. New York: Spinger.Google Scholar
UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme): Women and the Environment. 2004. http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=468&Article-ID=4488 (accessed Sept 3, 2014).Google Scholar
Woodford‐Berger, Prudence. 2004. Gender mainstreaming: What is it (about) and should we continue doing it? IDS Bulletin 35 (4): 65–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar