Rural Women and the Environment: Shared Concerns? (IRMA, 1994): Introduction: Gendered Knowledge

Rural Women and the Environment: Shared Concerns? (IRMA, 1994)

Introduction

		(introduction...)
		Women and Nature: Is there a Special Relationship?
		Gender and Environmental Change: Impact on Rural Households
		Gender division of labour
		Gendered Time
		Access to and Control of Resources
		Health and Nutrition
		Gendered Knowledge
		Social Support Networks

Gendered Knowledge

Women and men have different experimental knowledge depending on the way in which they relate with their local environment, their perception of processes of environmental degradation and the mechanisms by which they cope with socio-ecological change such as drought and famine. The devaluation and marginalisation of indigenous knowledge and skills is seen to disproportionately affect women as they have generally been excluded from "...the institutions through which modern scientific knowledge is created and transmitted," (Agarwal 1992: 143).