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WOMEN
Women and Sustainable Development
By Erin Hannah, Canada
If sustainability is to be for all people, young and old, living in the North and South, can it leave out half of the world's population? Can youth groups really work towards sustainability without ensuring that the rights of women are protected and respected?
There are many horror stories about women and development - from population programmes that provide women with unsafe contraceptives to community planning that ignores their contributions and interests. There are also many success stories, often brought about by women themselves. In communities around the world, women are organizing and are often leading the change towards more sustainable ways of life. The projects women are organizing range from tree planting in Kenya to housing projects in El Salvador to campaigns against the chlorine bleaching of paper products in Canada.
Women are put in a position that makes them one of the most vulnerable sectors of society. Statistics show that women, along with children, are the most impoverished sector of society. They are often the first stricken by disease and the last to receive treatment. Many movies and advertisements portray women as helpless sex objects.
Young women are constantly being reminded of their limits and restrictions, yet some are overcoming these barriers by becoming doctors, mothers, teachers, labourers, wives and farmers. Women of all ages are important contributors to society and they are struggling to realize their dreams in areas where they have been excluded.
Why Women?
Part of the transition toward a more sustainable way of life involves the redistribution of resources. However, the continuing flow of resources away from women and towards men only maintains the imbalance in the distribution of resources. From the beginning of their lives, female children are deprived of food, education, and attention while the available resources are used on their brothers. For example, the mortality rate for female children (age 2-5 years) in Pakistan is 54.4 per year per thousand. The rate for male children (age 2-5 years) in the same country is 36.9 per year per thousand (The World's Women 1970-1990, United Nations). The lives of female children are seen as less valuable than those of their male counterparts and sets a pattern that many women live by for their entire lives.
Women are seldom involved in decision making, making their perspectives absent when decisions are made about their future. In 1987, women made up more than 15 percent of the parliamentary representatives in fewer than 25 countries. In the 1980s, the region of Latin America and the Caribbean had the highest proportion of women in administrative positions with women holding 20 percent of these positions of authority (The World's Women 1970-1990, United Nations).
"Women around the world bear the brunt of the ecological and economic crisis hitting us today. As women, our struggle for economic and social justice is our common struggle"
Women's Action Agenda 21, 1991.
Cite as: Youth Sourcebook on Sustainable Development. Winnipeg: IISD, 1995. Online. Internet. http://iisd.ca/youth/ysbk057.htm.