Women, gender and the informal economy: An assessment of ILO research and suggested ways forward

This discussion paper provides an overview of ILO research on women, gender and the informal economy which was undertaken during the last two decades. It examines methodological and analytical frameworks used in various studies, identifies research gaps and proposes directions for future work. It ultimately aims to enhance ILO's work in developing consistent, coherent and coordinated policy advice to constituents across the four pillars of the ILO Decent Work Agenda: standards and fundamental principles and rights at work, employment, social protection and social dialogue

Low Carbon Resilient Development and Gender Equality in the Least Developed Countries

The issue of gender equality and climate change has come to the fore in both policy and research arenas in the last decade, due to the widespread recognition that neither the impact pathways for climate change, nor the policy responses are gender-neutral. Whilst it shouldn't be assumed to always be the case, climate change can worsen existing conflicts and gender inequalities, and some strategies to address climate risks can exacerbate this if not applied with gender-sensitive principles. Gender-sensitivity is therefore a key priority for lowcarbon climate resilient planning at local, national and international levels

"Mothers as Candy Wrappers": Critical Infrastructure Supporting the Transition into Motherhood

Copyright © ACM. The transition into motherhood is a complicated and often unsupported major life disruption. To alleviate mental health issues and to support identity re-negotiation, mothers are increasingly turning to online mothers\u27 groups, particularly private and secret Facebook groups; these can provide a complex system of social, emotional, and practical support for new mothers. In this paper we present findings from an exploratory interview study of how new mothers create, find, use, and participate in ICTs, specifically online mothers\u27 groups, to combat the lack of formal support systems by developing substitute networks. Utilizing a framework of critical infrastructures, we found that these online substitute networks were created by women, for women, in an effort to fill much needed social, political, and medical gaps that fail to see \u27woman and mother\u27 as a whole being, rather than simply as a \u27discarded candy wrapper\u27. Our study contributes to the growing literature on ICT use by mothers for supporting and negotiating new identities, by illustrating how these infrastructures can be re-designed and appropriated in use, for critical utilization

Balancing the Burden? Desk Review of Women\u27s Time Poverty and Infrastructure in Asia and the Pacific

The objectives of this review are as follows: (i) determine the contribution of infrastructure in reducing women’s time poverty and how this is being recorded; (ii) determine if women’s time savings result from increased access to infrastructure and are used for productive work that also reduces consumption poverty; (iii) assess ways in which infrastructure projects more effectively reduce both time and consumption poverty for women. Allocation of time for different activities between individuals within the household is influenced by gender division of labor and social and cultural norms. All over the world, women work more hours than men; men spend more time in paid work, whereas women bear the burden of unpaid work. Much of this unpaid work relates to household tasks such as fetching water and collecting firewood; cooking; and caring for the family, including the children, the sick, and the elderly. This can result in time poverty for women, necessitating trade-offs with regard to allocating time, reducing their time for paid work, and depriving them of time for social or community activities to improve their status. The findings from time-use surveys in Asia and the Pacific clearly indicate these gendered patterns of time-use. The review finds that basic infrastructure has the potential to reduce the time spent on housework and care work and influence the gender division of labor. However, infrastructure projects rarely include interventions to address this directly, even when reducing time burdens is a slated aim of the project. The review also reveals that the impacts of improved infrastructure on women’s time poverty significantly differ across types of infrastructure. Improved water supply has significant impacts on reducing the time women spend doing burdensome unpaid work but has little impact on the gender division of labor in the household. For women and girls without access to improved sanitation, the amount of time needed each day to find a place to defecate, or to accompany children, is significant but has been largely invisible until recently. Electricity also tends to reduce the amount of time spent on housework on care work, despite its limited use for cooking. Electricity sometimes has an impact on the amount of time women spend on paid work despite the reluctance to use electricity for cooking. An important impact of electricity is on the empowerment of women through increased access to information. Improved transport infrastructure results in significant changes in the lives of women and girls, which impact on how their time is allocated to different tasks. However, the impacts of travel time on time poverty of women are complex due to the new opportunities that are opened up, adding new time-use demands on women in addition to their traditional roles. There is a substantial gap in data indicating the relationships between infrastructure, time poverty, and women’s empowerment. Project-specific research could collect both quantitative and qualitative information and data to better understand such relationships

International partnerships of women for sustainable watershed governance in times of climate change

This chapter describes and assesses collaborative research with women actively engaged in local and global community engagement processes for water management in times of global climate change. As an equity-focused response to climate change, the interrelated networks and initiatives described in the chapter involve organizations and individuals in Brazil, Mozambique, South Africa, Kenya, and Canada. These collaborations are focused on strengthening low-income women's voices, and legitimizing their knowledge and action within water management institutions and processes. The chapter draws from what people learned through two international projects, the Sister Watersheds project with Canadian and Brazilian partners, and a Climate Change Adaptation in Africa project with partners in Canada, Kenya, Mozambique, and South Africa. The methods and approach of the Sister Watersheds project proved to be applicable to climate change education and organizing in Canada as well as in Brazil. The chapter summarizes that women are working together on climate education and water governance, helping to inspire and generate related strategies.This research was supported by the International Development Research Centre, grant number IDRC GRANT NO. 106002-00

Gender and Climate Change in the Indian Himalayas: Global Threats, Local Vulnerabilities, and Livelihood Diversification at the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve

Global climate change has numerous implications for members of mountain communities who feel the impacts in both physical and social dimensions. In the western Himalayas of India, a majority of residents maintain a livelihood strategy that includes a combination of subsistence or small-scale agriculture, livestock rearing, seasonal or long-term migration, and localized natural resource extraction. While warming temperatures, irregular patterns of precipitation and snowmelt, and changing biological systems present challenges to the viability of these traditional livelihood portfolios in general, we find that climate change is also undermining local communities’ livelihood assets in gender-specific ways. In this paper, we present a case study from the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve (Uttarakhand, India) that both outlines the implications of climate change for women farmers in the area and highlights the potential for ecotourism (as a form of livelihood diversification) to strengthen both key livelihood assets of women and local communities’ adaptive capacity more broadly. The paper intentionally employs a categorical focus on women but also addresses issues of inter-group and gender diversity. With this special issue in mind, suggestions for related research are proposed for consideration by climate scientists and social systems and/or policy modelers seeking to support gender justice through socially transformative perspectives and frameworks

Gender, Land and Water in the Poverty Reduction Strategy and Country Assistance Strategy for Sri Lanka\ud

Ten years after the adoption of the Beijing Declaration, gender mainstreaming is still high on the donor agenda. Nonetheless, a number of evaluation reports clearly indicate that operationalisation of gender mainstreaming strategies remains a challenging task. The integration of gender concerns at the country level requires adequate financial and human resources, and strong institutions, which have been lacking in the recent past. Has the World Bank, as one of the largest financial institutions, learned from previous critique? This paper looks at Sri Lanka's poverty reduction strategy and the World Bank's country assistance strategy for Sri Lanka, with a focus on the agricultural sector.\ud \ud Dix ans après l'adoption de la déclaration de Beijing, l'approche genre est toujours une priorité sur l'agenda des donateurs. Néanmoins, de nombreuses évaluations indiquent clairement que la mise en oeuvre de stratégies incorporant l'approche genre reste difficile. L'intégration des questions de genre au niveau national nécessite des ressources humaines et financières adéquates et des institutions fortes, facteurs qui ont fait défaut ces dernières années. Etant l'une des principales institutions financières, la Banque mondiale a t-elle appris des critiques qui lui ont été faites ? Cet article s'intéresse à la stratégie de réduction de la pauvreté au Sri Lanka et à la politique d'aide de la Banque mondiale à ce pays, l'accent étant mis sur le secteur agricole.\u

Climate Justice, Gender, and Intersectionality

Women are generally more vulnerable than men to environmental disasters and extreme weather events due to four main factors, which are related to women’s gendered roles in society: women are economically disadvantaged in comparison to men and are more likely to live in poverty; sexual and reproductive health and physical demands on their bodies during pregnancy, child-bearing and rearing, and menopause put them at special risk; their lives tend to be longer and they spend more time as seniors / widows, with resulting economic and health implications; and their social options are restricted so that they often fill paid and unpaid roles related to physical and emotional caring that put them at special risk of environmental injustice. This means that environmental and climate injustice are gendered in both rich and poor countries, and this can be manifested in a variety of ways: housing, transportation, food insecurity, stress, mental illness, disability, heat exposure, interruptions of electricity and water services, violence against women, partner and elder violence, toxic exposure, health vulnerability, worker safety, political voice/agency/leadership, and many others. Gender also intersects with other categories of vulnerability such as ethnicity, ‘race,’ sexuality, dis/ability, etc. to heighten climate risk and injustice. The gendered effects of extreme weather events are often not disaggregated in government statistics and research literature, and an explicit gender focus, including attention to the access of women and marginalized people to participation in climate policy setting, has been minimal. Both at the local level and globally, climate change adaptation and response initiatives can downplay or suppress democratic, equity-enhancing politics.This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, FRN IDRC and SSHRC File Agreement No. 2017-0082 and IDRC GRANT NO. 106002-00