Climate change sweeps without respite. Those who are in the worst conditions to face it, but also the first to face it, are women.
Sabrina Ortiz, from the collective Stop Fumigating Pergamino. Photo: Telam.
It is not just another issue, it is not an issue like any other. Womenhe global warming and, something inherent to everything, the climate change.
After a earthquakea women With her children in her arms, she returns to her home (or what is left of it) in a neighborhood full of rubble, in the middle of winter. in the neighborhood others women -the survivors- look for their lost objects under the destruction, their lost children, or some answer to know where they are going to sleep that night.
This could have been a scene from the earthquake that occurred in Turkey, in one of those buildings that were built without a license, further affecting areas exposed to natural disasters.
A woman among the rubble of the earthquake in Turkey. Photo: Reuters.
On the other side of the world it is unbearably hot. 35 or 40 degrees becomes the normal maximum temperature during the summer of the power outages constants. Without being able to turn on even a fan, most access small and not very ventilated homes. They sweat as they try to cool their children by playing with water, trying to resist. All we have to do is remember the last blackout that lasted the worst days of February in Villa LuganoCity of Buenos Aires, where the women who appeared on camera were showing the merchandise wasted due to lack of energy or the serious health problems caused by heat strokes.
Light cuts. Photo: NA.
On the other hand, we see women at the forefront of fights in earth defense in Argentina. This is no coincidence because they are the ones in charge of housework -you don’t pay- who see the effects of the pollution of the pesticides in their families and themselves.
In this sense, the women gathered in the Plaza San Martín de Córdoba, mothers who began to see the diseases that their children suffer from the fumigations and they run desperate hospitals. In each monthly mobilization, they make this claim visible.
Also, those of the Matanza-Riachuelo Basin where they began to organize themselves denouncing the waste that the factories of the Dock Sud petrochemical complex. On the other hand, the fires they are harming the elderly more than anything and pregnant who need special care in hospitals.
Precarious housing in the areas most affected by climate change
Different international organizations such as the United Nations Organization (UN) prepared reports giving an account of how the climate crisis mostly affects the women. It is that around the entire planet, they are still the ones who get the most precarious homes and jobs. “the women are more vulnerable to the impact of climate change than men, since they constitute the majority of poor population of the world and are more dependent on natural resources who are under threat from climate change”, they affirmed from the entity.
Latin American woman in emergency neighborhood. Photo: EFE.
Even in the particular case of Argentina, there is the Tenant Vulnerability Index (IVI) that allows measuring some indicators such as the quality of the home and the rental contract or payment. According to measurements made by the Center for
Legal and Social Studies (CELS): “In the case of households supported by women and trans-vestite or non-binary people, high vulnerability reaches 34% and 38%, respectively, while in those households that are supported by a man, high vulnerability is reduced to 26%.” This generates a lot of despair when not finding a consistent place to live.
Mapuche women mobilize against pollution. Photo: Telam.
Many women escape from the gender violence building precarious houses in emergency quarters, without the basic conditions and do not find answers from the authorities. In these places, services tend to be cut off recurrently, causing diseases as well as the worst consequences of heatwhich reaches unusual peaks due to the pollution human. Also, they face the energy rates with a much weaker employment situation than men, which increases this situation of misery to which they are subjected.
Energy crisis and gender inequality
While the energy transition is being debated in the world, today we can see that the most affected by the increase in tariffs and by the energy shortage are also the women.
For example, energy poverty affects 125 million people in the territory of the European Union alone. as the women earn an average of 13% less per hour than men and suffer the underemployment and the job insecurity, it costs them more to meet the bill payments. He domestic work non-payment is one more element that adds to this situation. These data were demonstrated by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) of the European Parliament (PE).
Greta Thunberg and other young women at the forefront of the fight against climate change. Photo: Reuters
The ever-increasing rise in energy prices, added to the impoverishment of women’s housing, and the lack of supply, aggravates the situation of oppression. Most of them cannot get a decent place to live and where they are not the first to suffer the energy crisis.
Women, the most affected by climate change
Being the women the majority of the poorest population are also the most affected by the decisions of energy companies when they decide to cut off resources in those neighborhoods on the days of greatest demand for electricity. Many build their houses in inhospitable places where lack of energy is a recurring problem. Or directly their salaries are enough for low rents in housing prone to service outagesor even the natural disasters.
Women against the oil companies in Mar Del Plata. Photo: Telam.
There are also those who, living quietly in their neighborhoods, see their landscapes devastated by the effects of the fumigations, fires and pesticides, as well as the mega-mining and different ways of oil extraction that contaminates their land and the water that they and their children drink. These are the main causes to take into account when we think about the climate change.
Being the most neglected, they are the most affected by this housing situation and therefore the most exposed. However, also are the first to speak up and take the lead on these issueswhatever it takes.
