The Nature of Gender: Work, Gender, and Environment

Andrea J. Nightingale’s article is an important methodological text in feminist political ecology. Based on community forestry in Nepal, it refuses to treat gender as a static variable added to environmental research. Instead, gender is understood as a process produced through work, embodiment, affect, ecological knowledge, and institutional power.

The article matters because it makes “women in the environment” more than a demographic category. Nightingale analyzes who cuts fuelwood, who manages forests, who is recognized as having environmental knowledge, and who can speak in community meetings, while also attending to fear, shame, bodily fatigue, and local belonging.

For FemRes, this paper pairs well with Agarwal’s analysis of resource rights. Agarwal foregrounds institutions and distribution; Nightingale shows how those relations enter bodies, labor, and everyday practice, giving feminist political ecology a finer account of power.