The embodied politics of climate change: analysing the gendered division of environmental labour in the UK

Abstract

The intersection between gender and climate change action has received little scholarly attention. To facilitate a critical orientation towards the informal economies of social reproduction, the ways that the UK’s climate politics are rooted in masculinist discourses of a green economy are illustrated. Adopting an intersectional approach, it is argued that such a green economy perspective diverts attention from labouring bodies in climate politics, invisibilising the ‘who’ in the experience of climate solutions. Through critically engaging divisions of labour in climate policy, evidenced through a feminist critical discourse analysis, it is shown how a surface-level inclusion of gender perpetuates the labouring bodies associated with specific labour markets. In response, it is suggested that an intersectional approach to climate policy can account for these omissions and highlights the ways in which a more just, intersectional climate politics might be formulated.