If We Want Climate Policy That Works, Listen to Women

Melody Zhang writes in Sojourners, "Women are our very first environment. This is the traditional teaching of Indigenous women: that they carry, nurture, grow, and sustain life within their bodies. Women as life-givers understand intimately the relationship between body, environment, movement, and our place in the world.
"Women carry our clans and ... by carrying our clans, are the ones that hold that land for the next generation,” shares Iako’tsira:reh Amanda Lickers from Turtle Clan in Seneca in Violence on the Land, Violence on our Bodies.    Today, a quarter of all economically active women are also involved in agriculture. In fact, in places like rural Kenya, where subsistence farming is the main vocation, women do more farming than men.   Lenders have even confirmed  that women are more responsible holders of property deeds and that microfinance works more effectively  and provides more for the whole community when provided to women. Yet women still face severe inequalities in access to land and credit: Though women produce the majority of the world’s food, they own only less than  20 percent  of the world’s titled land."

IT IS TIME TO OVERTURN THE PATRIARCHAL MODEL OF PRODUCTION AND EXTRACTION THAT HAS WREAKED HAVOC ON PEOPLE AND THE PLANET SINCE THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.

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