Gaps and Silences: Gender and Climate Policies in the Global North

Abstract

For decades, feminist activists and scholars have stressed the importance of integrating gender perspectives into the most defining challenge of our time: the climate disaster. In this article, we analyze official Norwegian policy documents in the context of regional and supra-national levels. We identify a lack of connection between gender equality policy and climate policy in the Norwegian policy documents that is symptomatic of a general silence on gender in climate policy in the Global North. We argue that there is untapped potential for gender mainstreaming in Norwegian climate policy and suggest that gendered, disaggregated data on climate issues could be combined with scholarly insights about the Nordic gender equality model so as to further our understanding of the climate crisis. Finally, we ask whether the absence of gender perspectives in Norwegian climate policy may reflect an unrecognized contradiction between Nordic gender equality policy and sustainability.