Joyce M. Barry, visiting assistant professor of women’s studies, attended the UN COP21 Climate Change summit at Le Bourget convention center in Paris on Dec 4. Barry participated in a women and gender constituency conversation that explored the ways in which gender equality and women’s human rights are fundamental to combating global climate change.
The conversation focused on how individual women and women’s rights groups around the world are compiling community based evidence of the ways in which gender inequality is connected to the changing climate. These groups also seek to give women platforms to voice their community concerns, and to pressure world leaders to develop and promote gender responsive climate policies.
This women and gender constituency conversation included participants from the U.S., Laos, Pakistan, Scotland, Bangladesh, The Philippines and Kenya. Barry, author of Standing Our Ground: Women, Environmental Justice and the Fight to End Mountaintop Removal, is working on a new book project that focuses on the gendered health problems of people living in fossil fuel extraction zones in the context of global climate change.
