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Crawford School of Public Policy · ANU College of Law, Governance and Policy
This course explores how gender, poverty, and inequality intersect with environmental and climate change, with a particular focus on rural contexts in developing countries. Key topics include climate change, natural resource management, agricultural transitions, and the gendered impacts of natural disasters and environmental loss and damage. Students will learn to apply gender analysis tools—drawing on intersectionality and feminist economics—to assess how environmental and climate-related policies affect different groups. The course highlights how gender-blind programs can reinforce existing inequalities, overlook unpaid care work, and fail to respond to structural issues such as the feminization of agriculture. While grounded in case studies from the Global South, the course also includes selected examples from developed countries. By the end of the course, students will be able to identify and analyze gender-specific challenges in environmental and climate contexts and evaluate policies with a focus on equity and inclusion.
Review of an article from the readings (600 words)
Learning outcomes 1, 2, 5
Evaluating gender inclusion in a development project (1000 words)
Learning outcomes 1, 2, 3
Presentation of a case study (10 minutes)
Learning outcomes 1, 2, 5
Final Essay Project (not more than 3,000 words)
Learning outcomes 3, 4, 5
A standard workload for a 6 unit course is 130 hours including class time and independent study.
Readings will be provided on the CANVAS course site. Preliminary Reading Agarwal, B. (2009). Gender and forest conservation: The impact of women’s participation in community forest governance. Ecological Economics, 68(11), 2785–2799. Akter, S., & Bagchi, K. (2021). Is off-grid residential solar power inclusive? Energy Research & Social Science, 82, 102292. Alkire, S., Meinzen-Dick, R., Peterman, A., Quisumbing, A., Seymour, G., & Vaz, A. (2013). The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index. World Development, 52, 71–91. Carr, E. R., & Thompson, M. C. (2014). Gender and climate change adaptation in agrarian settings: Current thinking, new directions, and research frontiers. Geography Compass, 8(3), 182–197. Doss, C., Meinzen-Dick, R., Quisumbing, A., & Theis, S. (2018). Women in agriculture: Four myths. Global Food Security, 16, 69–74. Kabeer, N. (1999). Resources, agency, achievements: Reflections on the measurement of women’s empowerment. Development and Change, 30(3), 435–464. Neumayer, E., & Plümper, T. (2007). The gendered nature of natural disasters: The impact of catastrophic events on the gender gap in life expectancy, 1981–2002. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 97(3), 551–566. Sen, A. (1992). Missing women. BMJ: British Medical Journal, 304(6827), 587.