To achieve environmental sustainability, policies have to reduce gender gaps politically, economically and socially so that their access to resources is protected. The Human Development Report (2003) acknowledges that gender equality is at the core of whether the goals will be achieved-from improving health and fighting disease to reducing poverty and mitigating hunger, to expanding education and lowering child mortality, to increasing access to safe water, to ensuring environmental sustainability.
The mortality rates between men and women reveal the immense disparity that exists between them. Despite their biological advantage women have higher mortality rates especially in South and East Asia. The ‘missing women’ phenomenon refers to females estimated to have died due to discrimination in access to health and nutrition. Gender discrimination is accompanied by biases against other personal characteristics, including location (rural areas) ethnic background (indigenous minorities) and socio-economic status (poor households). Gender gaps in health and education push them backwards and entrench a patriarchal regime which works against the demands of a sustainable order, although several World Bank studies and research undertaken by independent organizations found that women were perfect agents of change at the grassroots level and are also the carriers of indigenous wisdom.
The three main social movements that emerged in the last three decades are feminism, peace and ecology. Feminism raised some fundamental questions about the mode of production and conditions of work. It emphasized the cultural identities and attacked the oppressive forces of patriarchy. The diversity of women’s situations across class, racial and cultural boundaries has not simply enriched these insights but has also contributed to the understanding of the patriarchal system of cash generation policies. Women’s traditional life and work brought them closer to useful tasks in the family such as fuel wood collection, cow rearing, herb collection and fetching water from streams and rivers. When environment is destroyed they are the first ones to be affected but they are the last ones to be consulted in policy formulations.
The centralized economic planning of projects on the basis of cost-benefit assessment completely bypasses the assessment of the intangibles such as displacement of women and their homes which constitute the self-sustaining economies. In India, Gadhchiroli in Maharashtra has been a striking example of the harm inflicted by the developmental policies upon women. Every development project in that area brought a team of outside contractors, engineers and builders who employed local men into construction and reduced women into underpaid labour. However the same group of outsiders raised liquor shops and enticed women into flesh trade which destroyed the peace, safety and tranquility of the area. Women who managed the household economy realized that whatever the men folk earned in cash went back to the same nexus of contractors through liquor or other spurious arrangements while their environment was damaged so that household income which they earned in the form of usufruct (nuts, shrubs, grasses and fuel wood) was lost forever. This led them to a violent protest against the developers by breaking their shops and forcing them to withdraw all their developmental projects from their land.
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Eco-feminists are emphasizing the human development side of new production forces which restricts the ruthless destruction of forests and wetlands and precious farm animals to slaughter houses. The eco-feminist movements have been in the forefront of the demand for sustainability. The Green Belt Movement in Africa, Chipko and Appiko (Chipko of the Western Ghats) in India and even the Narmada Bachao Andolan has shown that the requirements of women have not been adequately recognized by the development experts and policy planners. The loggers in forests, the trawlers in the coastal region and the abattoirs in the village belts have been constantly weaning out the sustainable resource base of women economy of the household which provides a sustainable shield to the cash economy of the nation. What is required is a balanced coexistence of the two economies and not the uprooting of the soft for the alien mechanized hi-tech development.