Environmental Justice und Gender: Warum Frauen die EJ-Bewegung prägen und trotzdem nichts zu sagen haben

Abstract

In the Environmental Justice (EJ) discourse justice of the distribution of environmental goods und burdens is discussed by means of different attributes. While race has been thoroughly examined, gender has rarely been the focus of the debate. However, environmental burdens as well as environmental decision- making are often distributed to the disadvantage of women. Though many EJ movements have, to a high degree, been supported and shaped by women, they are still mariginalized in public codetermination. In this article I will show that prevailing socially constructed identities (e.g. a motherhood identity) and the attribution of roles to certain spaces (e.g. the public sphere and the private sphere) are responsible for the occurence and persistance of such injustices. Furthermore, I will demonstrate that those who currently benefit from the system (consciously or unconsciously) perpetuate exisiting power structures, but that through operating in an interspace beetween private and public, the activists of EJ movements create possibilities to emancipate themselves from strict roles. To achieve environmental justice social power structures and role models have to be broken down. This will enable those suffering injustices to alter the social conditions according to their requirements and to mold the public sphere, which is currently predominatly male, into a gender-neutral sphere.