Virtue and Vulnerability

Seema Arora-Jonsson’s article reviews two common claims in climate change research and policy: that women in the Global South are the most vulnerable, and that women in the Global North are more environmentally virtuous. Both claims seem to bring gender into climate debate, but they can also flatten complex relations of power into usable stereotypes.

The article’s key move is to distinguish “women” from “gender relations.” Climate risk does not automatically fall on all women in the same way, and men do not produce emissions through one uniform social position. Land, class, caste, race, nation, governance, public decision-making, and scientific evidence shape who is exposed, who is heard, and who benefits from climate policy.

For FemRes, this is a foundational climate justice reading. It warns against relying on images of women as victims or saviors, and instead asks feminist climate politics to analyze situated evidence, institutional power, and unequal knowledge production.