Gender and sustainability - New research perspectives

Abstract

Over the last few years the amount of discussions and research on gender and sustainability has increased steadily. These efforts were primarily initiated by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Beyond the programmatic level of gender justice and empowerment of women, there is an epistemological, conceptual and methodological approach in feminist research that has to be taken into account to generate adequate data of complex living contexts. In Germany the discourse on gender and sustainability, which started as a discussion on women and nature/environment, became influenced by the feminist criticism of science and technology and came to be embedded within the political activities of the women's movement. This article focuses on new research qualities that emerge if gender research in social sciences is combined with feminist criticism of science and technology.