Women and Climate Action in the Global South: A Phenomenological Inquiry

Abstract

While women as a category are largely studied as victims of climate change, they are also actors, agents and knowledge-bearers. This is evident in the numerous women-led movements and initiatives on climate change and climate justice, particularly in the global south. However, a preliminary survey of the literature shows that women’s agency in climate change has not been analysed from the phenomenological perspective. Phenomenology as an approach examines human experience from the situated view of the subject as engaged with the world through concepts such as being-in-the-world, pre-conceptual knowledge, transcendence and immanence. Analysing diverse case studies of women-led climate movements and initiatives in the developing south, the article argues that women have shown agency grounded in their pre-conceptual knowledge of nature. Further, the intentionality of human existence and its inseparability from the world of experience condition women to act and mobilise. These movements and initiatives have also proven to be tools of self-realisation for women within the larger patriarchal context. Understanding women’s activism and participation in climate movements through the phenomenological lens has critical policy ramifications too.