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Energy security remains a concern in Sub-Saharan Africa. The conceptualisation of energy security at the urban household level has shifted from the security of energy supply to the security of energy services, which is focused more on the demand side. Women and young girls are affected the most by insecure energy services. However, energy policy discourses often fail to focus on the security of energy services or to recognise gender roles in the provision of energy services at the household level. It is therefore imperative to develop innovative and gender-sensitive energy services solutions with a new paradigm of participatory solution design, such as living labs. We assessed living labs and the energy security landscape in poor urban environments through a systematic literature review, and proposed a framework for demonstrating how living labs could be used as a lever to promote the security of energy services. The security of energy services in poor urban households could be improved by harnessing the different innovative strengths of the respective genders. Living labs provide an ideal space for co-generating, co-designing, and co-learning to produce tailored energy services solutions. There is a need for a collaborative effort in resourcing researchers to undertake practical investigations of interactive multi-stakeholder platforms with those who are intended to benefit from the policy to increase its impact and to bridge the science-policy divide. © 2022, South African Institute of Industrial Engineering. All rights reserved.

The changes in climatic conditions and their associated impacts are contributing to a worsening of existing gender inequalities and a heightening of women’s socioeconomic vulnerabilities in South Africa. Using data collected by research methods inspired by the tradition of participatory appraisals, we systematically discuss the impacts of climate change on marginalized women and the ways in which they are actively responding to climate challenges and building their adaptive capacity and resilience in the urban areas of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. We argue that changes in climate have both direct and indirect negative impacts on women’s livelihoods and well-being. Less than one-half (37%) of the women reported implementing locally developed coping mechanisms to minimize the impacts of climate-related events, whereas 63% reported lacking any form of formal safety nets to deploy and reduce the impacts of climate-induced shocks and stresses. The lack of proactive and gender-sensitive local climate change policies and strategies creates socioeconomic and political barriers that limit the meaningful participation of women in issues that affect them and marginalize them in the climate change discourses and decision-making processes, thereby hampering their efforts to adapt and reduce existing vulnerabilities. Thus, we advocate for the creation of an enabling environment to develop and adopt progendered, cost-effective, transformative, and sustainable climate change policies and adaptation strategies that are responsive to the needs of vulnerable groups (women) of people in society. This will serve to build their adaptive capacity and resilience to climate variability and climate change–related risks and hazards. © 2022 American Meteorological Society.

C e­chapitre­porte­sur­les­défis­d’une­approche­participative­intégrant une perspective d’équité de genre rencontrés dans le cadre d’un programme de recherche-intervention sur la pollution urbaine en Afrique de l’Ouest, programme intitulé « Chaire écosanté sur la pollution urbaine de l’air et les maladies respiratoires1 ». Conçu et dirigé par des chercheurs et chercheuses de quatre pays africains (Bénin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire et Sénégal), ce programme regroupait des équipes de­recherche­de­chacun­des­pays­(équipes-pays)­et­quelques­collèguesde­«­pays­du­nord­»,­dont­le­Canada­(Québec).­Il­a­été­financé­par­leCentre de recherches pour le développement international du Canada. Outre des objectifs de recherche et de formation, la Chaire comportait un volet nommé Air-Sain qui visait à sensibiliser les actrices et acteurs de­divers­milieux­et­à­soutenir­des­changements­durables­afin­de­réduirela pollution urbaine.

La plupart des études sur le changement climatique ont tendance à minimiser la nature sexuée de la vulnérabilité. Au mieux, le genre est abordé en termes de binarité homme-femme, considérés comme des forces opposées plutôt que dans des relations variables d'interdépendance. Une telle construction peut aboutir à l'adoption de politiques et d'interventions culturellement inadaptées et aveugles au genre. En Égypte, pays très vulnérable au changement climatique, l'analyse sexuée de la vulnérabilité est presque inexistante. Cet article aborde cette importante lacune de la recherche en posant la question et en s'appuyant sur un contexte égyptien rural : « Comment les aspects relationnels sexués des moyens de subsistance des hommes et des femmes au sein du ménage et de la communauté influencent-ils la vulnérabilité au changement climatique ? ». Pour répondre à cette question, je m'appuie sur une analyse sexuée des relations sociales, encadrée par une compréhension des moyens de subsistance durables. Au cours de 16 mois de travail sur le terrain, j'ai utilisé plusieurs méthodes ethnographiques pour collecter des données dans deux villages à faible revenu culturellement et ethniquement divers en Égypte. Mon principal argument est que les expériences du changement climatique sont étroitement liées au genre et aux relations sociales plus larges au sein du ménage et de la communauté. Ces facteurs sont façonnés par des idéologies et des cultures locales genrées qui sont ancrées dans les relations conjugales, la parenté et la relation à l’environnement, comparées entre les deux villages. Dans cet article, je soutiens avec force que la vulnérabilité au changement climatique est fortement genrée et que, par conséquent, l’analyse de genre devrait être au cœur des discours, des politiques et des interventions sur le changement climatique.

Large-scale mining, oil, and gas projects can have a profound and negative affect on women’s rights and gender equality. Adverse impacts include the disruption of family and social life; the increased risks to health and safety, especially in terms of domestic and sexual violence; environmental degradation; as well as changing access to and control over land and livelihoods. These adverse impacts fall most heavily on women. This case study focused on the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP). It shows that conventional environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA) processes may not identify all potential adverse impacts on women, and can fail to analyse the implications of potential impacts on gender norms and gender power relations, leading to a downplaying of the significance of these impacts. The implications for women and girls’ health and safety resulting from the in-migration of large numbers of mostly men seeking project employment and other opportunities and increases in women’s unpaid care work are two potential adverse impacts the EACOP ESIA failed to identify. Strengthening gender analysis within the current suite of impact assessment tools and methodologies, particularly for extractive industries projects, is therefore urgently needed. © 2021 IAIA.

Malgré le lien direct entre le changement climatique et la pratique du travail social, l'implication des travailleurs sociaux dans la résolution des problèmes liés au changement climatique reste décourageante. Cela est attribué au manque d'exposition aux questions de changement climatique pendant la formation des travailleurs sociaux, ce qui conduit à un manque d'outils adéquats pour que les travailleurs sociaux intègrent les questions de changement climatique dans leurs interventions quotidiennes avec les clients. Cet article vise à fournir des lignes directrices pour la pratique du travail social en intégrant la participation des femmes rurales dans le discours sur le changement climatique. Les travailleurs sociaux et les femmes rurales sont absents des interventions sur le changement climatique aux niveaux professionnel, pratique et personnel. Les impacts précaires du changement climatique se manifestent par des inondations, des sécheresses, des pénuries d'eau, l'épuisement des ressources naturelles, des cyclones et des vagues de chaleur, affectent de manière disproportionnée les femmes, en particulier celles des communautés rurales. La vulnérabilité des femmes au changement climatique émane de l'exclusion dans les processus de prise de décision sur le changement climatique, des normes et modèles culturels qui les confinent aux responsabilités ménagères, du manque de capacité d'adaptation, des faibles niveaux d'alphabétisation, de la domination patriarcale et des niveaux élevés de pauvreté. Les travailleurs sociaux sont donc appelés à favoriser le changement social, en donnant aux femmes les moyens de participer aux discussions sur le changement climatique comme les hommes. Un modèle basé sur les expériences menées en Afrique australe est présenté pour fournir des orientations aux travailleurs sociaux sur la meilleure façon d’intégrer les dimensions de genre dans les interventions sur le changement climatique. Cela favoriserait la justice sociale et environnementale, la résilience sociale, la participation égale au débat sur le changement climatique, le renforcement des capacités et la capacité d’adaptation des femmes rurales.

In low-income and middle-income countries, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, the COVID-19 pandemic has had substantial implications for women’s wellbeing. Policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted the gendered aspect of pandemics; however, addressing the gendered implications of the COVID-19 pandemic comprehensively and effectively requires a planetary health perspective that embraces systems thinking to inequalities. This Viewpoint is based on collective reflections from research done by the authors on COVID-19 responses by international and regional organisations, and national governments, in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa between June, 2020, and June, 2021. A range of international and regional actors have made important policy recommendations to address the gendered implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on women’s health and wellbeing since the start of the pandemic. However, national-level policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have been partial and inconsistent with regards to gender in both sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, largely failing to recognise the multiple drivers of gendered health inequalities. This Viewpoint proposes that addressing the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on women in low-income and middle-income countries should adopt a systems thinking approach and be informed by the question of who is affected as opposed to who is infected. In adopting the systems thinking approach, responses will be more able to recognise and address the direct gendered effects of the pandemic and those that emerge indirectly through a combination of long-standing structural inequalities and gendered responses to the pandemic.

Contemporary large-scale land transactions (LSLTs), also called land grabs, are historically unprecedented in their scale and pace. They have provoked robust scholarly debates, yet studies of their gender-differentiated impacts remain more rare, particularly when it comes to how changes in control over land and resources affect women's labor, and thereby their livelihoods and well-being. Our comparative study of four LSLTs in western Ethiopia finds that the transactions led to substantial land use change, including relocation and decrease in size of smallholder parcels, loss of communally-held grazing lands, and loss of forests. These changes had far-reaching impacts on household labor allocation, the gendered division of labor, and household wellbeing. But their effects on women are both more adverse and more severe, expressed in terms of increased wage labor to make up for lost land and livestock, more time spent gathering firewood and water from increasingly distant locations, and an increased intensity of household responsibilities where male members underwent wage labor migration. These burdens led to negative psychological, corporal, and material effects on women living in and near transacted areas compared to their situation prior to transactions. This article both responds to the deficit in studies on the impacts of LSLTs on gendered livelihoods, labor relations, and wellbeing outcomes, and lays the groundwork for future research. © 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This paper examines gender differentials in survival amongst older people (50+ years) in the Nairobi slums and to the best of our knowledge is the first study of its kind in an urban African setting. The results provide evidence contrary to the expected paradox of poorer self-rated health yet better survival amongst older women. Older women in the Nairobi slums have poorer self-rated health and poorer circumstances across other factors, including disability and socio-economic status. Further, older women in the slums do not have better survival. The conventional female advantage in mortality only becomes apparent after accounting for the cumulative influence of individual characteristics, social networks, health and socio-economic status, suggesting the female advantage in unadjusted old-age mortality does not apply to contexts where women experience significant disadvantage across multiple life domains. This highlights the urgent need to redress the support, status and opportunities available for women across the life course in contexts such as the Nairobi slums. In addition, a greater number of factors differentiate mortality risk amongst men than amongst women, suggesting inequality amongst slum dwelling older men and highlighting the need for gender sensitive interventions which account for the particular needs of both genders in old age.

This qualitative multiple case study explored the sources of emotional stress experienced by 12 female Zimbabwean primary heads leading in socio-economic disadvantaged schools in Masvingo District and their attempts to alleviate the challenges that the children from these disadvantaged contexts presented them with. Data was generated through individual semi-structured interviews, and observations and the data was analysed thematically to elicit the sources of their emotional labour that emanated from stress-related cultural and contextual factors. The study revealed that despite the school heads experiencing anxiety, pain, sorrow, sympathy, frustration, sadness, and concern they were happy about their appointments to leadership positions. The sources of their emotional stress were related to the plight of children; stereotypical gender expectations; lack of parental cooperation; and unrealistic professional and social expectations. The study suggests wellness recesses; the establishment of social networks through which heads could share their experiences; and professional development programmes on stress management as possible interventions that could help the heads deal with these stressful circumstances. © 2015, © The Author(s) 2015.

How are social inequalities experienced, reproduced and challenged in local, global and transnational spaces? What role does the control of space play in distribution of crucial resources and forms of capital (housing, education, pleasure, leisure, social relationships)? The case studies in Geographies of Privilege demonstrate how power operates and is activated within local, national, and global networks. Twine and Gardener have put together a collection that analyzes how the centrality of spaces (domestic, institutional, leisure, educational) are central to the production, maintenance and transformation of inequalities. The collected readings show how power--in the form of economic, social, symbolic, and cultural capital--is employed and experienced. The volume's contributors take the reader to diverse sites, including brothels, blues clubs, dance clubs, elite schools, detention centers, advocacy organizations, and public sidewalks in Canada, Italy, Spain, United Arab Emirates, Mozambique, South Africa, and the United States. Geographies of Privilege is the perfect teaching tool for courses on social problems, race, class and gender in Geography, Sociology and Anthropology.