Beijing, Gender and Environment – Challenges for Ecological Sustainability, Development and Justice?

Twenty years ago the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action was adopted to ‘… advance the goals of equality, development and peace for all women everywhere …’ (Beijing Declaration, 1995, paragraph 3). Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Chapter K (of the Beijing Platform for Action) on ‘women and the environment’ laid down three strategic objectives, inter alia , with objective 2 being to ‘integrate gender concerns and perspectives in policies and programmes for sustainable development’. This article demonstrates the importance of the implementation of this objective – on the one hand for progress on gender equality, and on the other hand for an ecologically sustainable development

The 'feminisation of poverty' in Costa Rica: to what extent a conundrum?

Quantitative data from Costa Rica suggest that poverty is 'feminising', especially in respect of female-headed households, who, since the early 1990s, have constituted a progressively greater share of the population classified as poor. This presents something of a conundrum given significant attempts on the part of the state to promote gender equality and to direct public expenditure to low-income women. Some light on this apparent paradox is shed by qualitative fieldwork undertaken in Guanacaste province where female headship seems to have become a more viable, and sometimes, preferred, option among women on account of its role in enhancing well-being. This is largely on account of social and legal changes that have contributed to making women less inclined to tolerate gender inequalities at the domestic level. The findings underline the importance of embracing gendered subjectivities in analyses of the 'feminisation of poverty' and invite caution about the latter being a unilaterally negative phenomenon