Lesson Plan: Gender and Climate Change

As an Undergraduate teacher in the Social Sciences, you can use this lesson plan to teach your students about the gender dimensions in the field of climate change.

Climate change is a defining factor of human development in recent times. It is not only a topic for scientific or technical discourse but important for its influence on social, economic, and political conditions with wide reaching effects on social justice and gender equality. Power structures, cultural and social constructs have been responsible for the gender norm- rights, roles, capacities, preferences-across the world and, often climate change impacts women more than it does men. A range of different factors such as age, ethnicity, and class define the nature of these differences. The discrepancy also exists in the participation of women in climate policy and action.

This lesson plan provides teaching resources to introduce gender, sex, and sexuality studies to your students. It focuses on understanding the gender dimensions of climate change in terms of its impacts, representation, and participation. The lesson plan includes resources for your students to better understand climate change and gender in agriculture, biodiversity, consumption, disasters, heath, waste, water, and migration amongst others.

Thus, the use of this lesson plan allows you to teach aspects of Gender Studies in your Social Sciences classroom. This lesson plan can be used as a module in a Gender Studies course or it can be used in the Gender section of an Introduction to Sociology course.

Questions

Use this lesson plan to help your students find answers to:

  1. How does climate change impact women?
  1. Why do women face limitations in participation in climate policy and responses?
  2. What are the gender dimensions of climate change and its impacts on
  • Agriculture
  • Biodiversity
  • Consumption
  • Disasters
  • Energy
  • Forests
  • Health
  • Migration
  • Population
  • Tourism
  • Transport
  • Waste
  • Water

About Lesson Plan

Grade Level High school
Discipline Social Sciences
Topic(s) in Discipline Gender, Women’s Studies, Justice

Human Rights, Women’s Rights

Climate Topic Climate and Society

Policies, Politics, and Environmental Governance

Location Global
Language(s) English
Access Online
Approximate
Time Required
60 – 120 min

Contents

Reading

(10-30 min)

A reading to introduce Gender, Sex and Sexuality studies from OpenStax books. This chapter is part of the ‘Introduction to Sociology 2e” open access textbook.
Video

(18 min)

A video to introduce gender and climate change by Prof Petra Tschakert, Pennsylvania State University.

 

Readings

(30 -60 min)

A set of readings from GenderCC - Women for Climate Justice website that present gender dimensions of climate change in several sectors such as agriculture, biodiversity, consumption, disasters, heath, waste, water, and migration, amongst others.
1 Introduction to Gender Studies Introduce your students to the lesson plan by providing an overview of Gender, Sex, and Sexuality studies. You may proceed with your own lecture material or can provide your students with an introductory reading from OpenStax books. This open-access textbook titled ‘Introduction to Sociology 2e’ provides an excellent introduction to different topics in Sociology including Gender Studies. The book has been authored by several university faculty and includes instructor and student resources.

It can be accessed at:

https://openstax.org/details/books/introduction-sociology-2e

The section on Gender, Sex, and Sexuality can be accessed here.

Different aspects of the field are covered in this resource and include difference between sex and gender, gender identity, homophobia and heterosexism in society, transgender, transsexual, and homosexual identities, socialization on gender roles, stratification of gender in institutions, gender from the view of each sociological perspective, different attitudes associated with sex and sexuality, sexual inequality in various societies, theoretical perspectives on sex and sexuality, amongst others.

2 Introduction to Climate Change and Gender Next, introduce the topic of gender and climate change by using a video by Prof Petra Tschakert, Pennsylvania State University.

This resource can be accessed here.

In this video Prof Tschakert discusses the importance of gender and other dimensions of identity and inequality in the context of climate

change. Emphasize to your students, her remarks on how women are

differentially or more severely impacted by climate change but also how it is problematic that women are often portrayed as helpless, as victims of climate change with little knowledge and often no voice or agency.

3 Gender and Climate Change in different sectors Next, discuss with your students the gender dimensions of climate change in different sectors using the GenderCC - Women for Climate Justice website. This resource can be found  here.

It includes the following sections, each of which contains an overview of climate change and gender dimensions of the sector and links to case studies, guidebooks, and reports.

1. Agriculture, gender and climate change https://www.gendercc.net/gender-climate/agriculture.html

2. Biodiversity, gender and climate change

https://www.gendercc.net/gender-climate/biodiversity.html

3. Consumption, gender and climate change

https://www.gendercc.net/gender-climate/consumption.html

4. Disaster, gender and climate change

https://www.gendercc.net/gender-climate/disaster.html

5. Energy, gender and climate change

https://www.gendercc.net/gender-climate/energy.html

6. Forests, gender and climate change

https://www.gendercc.net/gender-climate/forests.html

7. Health, gender and climate change

https://www.gendercc.net/gender-climate/health.html

8. Migration, gender and climate change

https://www.gendercc.net/gender-climate/migration.html

9. Population, gender and climate change

https://www.gendercc.net/gender-climate/population.html

10. Tourism, gender and climate change

https://www.gendercc.net/gender-climate/population.html

11. Transport, gender and climate change

https://www.gendercc.net/gender-climate/transport.html

12. Waste, gender and climate change

https://www.gendercc.net/gender-climate/waste.html

13. Water, gender and climate change

https://www.gendercc.net/gender-climate/water.html

 

You may choose to discuss the gender dimensions of climate change through a group discussion activity and by assigning sectors to different groups of students. Finally, you may ask students to summarize the gender dimensions of climate change in terms of its impacts, representation, and participation.

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