Cover not available

Article published In: Journal of Language and Politics: Online-First Articles

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB
authorization required

Shaping gender policies at the COPs

A critical discourse analysis

ORCiD logo with link | University of Ljubljana
Published online: 8 August 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.22193.mat
Abstract
This research delves into gendered climate change issues and their solutions and explores how they have been (re)produced within policymaking at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conferences of the Parties. By employing Fairclough’s 3D framework of critical discourse analysis, this study examines the latest gender action plan along with its supporting documents and projects. The findings reveal that prevailing discourses on gender prioritise women as key agents in addressing both climate change and its gendered consequences while often relegating Parties and other international stakeholders to ambiguous or supporting roles. Such emphasis on the empowerment and education of women to tackle global climate change issues may overlook the importance of addressing transformative changes to combat societal gender inequalities. These inequalities not only marginalise women in the context of climate change but also impede their involvement in the policymaking endeavours which aim to address it.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Historical development of gender-focused discussions at the COPs
  • 3.Theory and methodology
  • 4.Analysis and discussion
    • 4.1Text level of Fairclough’s 3D Framework
    • 4.2Discursive practice level of Fairclough’s 3D Framework
      • 4.2.1Women as victims of climate change
      • 4.2.2Women as agents of change
    • 4.3Social practice level of Fairclough’s 3D Framework
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Declaration of competing interest
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
References (60)
Bibliography
Adler, Emanuel. 1997. “Seizing the Middle Ground: Constructivism in World Politics.” European Journal of International Relations 3 (3): 319–63. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Aguilar, Lorena, Ariana Araujo, and Andrea Quesada-Aguilar. 2007. “Fact Sheet on Gender and Climate Change.” IUCN. [URL]
Allwood, Gill. 2020. “Mainstreaming Gender and Climate Change to Achieve a Just Transition to a Climate-Neutral Europe.” JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 58 (S1): 173–86. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Alston, Margaret. 2013. “Introducing Gender and Climate Change: Research, Policy and Action.” In Research, Action and Policy: Addressing the Gendered Impacts of Climate Change, edited by Margaret Alston and Kerri Whittenbury, 3–14. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Arora-Jonsson, Seema. 2011. “Virtue and Vulnerability: Discourses on Women, Gender and Climate Change.” Global Environmental Change, Special Issue on The Politics and Policy of Carbon Capture and Storage 21 (2): 744–51. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. “Forty Years of Gender Research and Environmental Policy: Where Do We Stand?” Women’s Studies International Forum, Special Issue on Gender, Mobility and Social Change 471: 295–308. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Beijing Platform for Action, 15 September 1995, adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bessis, Sophie. 2004. “International Organizations and Gender: New Paradigms and Old Habits.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 29 (2): 633–47. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bretherton, Charlotte. 1998. “Global Environmental Politics: Putting Gender on the Agenda?” Review of International Studies 24 (1): 85–100. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Burr, Vivien. 2003. Social Constructionism. London & New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Castree, Noel, and Thomas MacMillan. 2001. “Dissolving Dualisms: Actor-Networks and the Reimagination of Nature.” Faculty of Social Sciences – Papers (Archive), 11, 208–24.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, New York, 18 December 1979, United Nations Treaty Series, registration no. I-20378. [URL]
Demeritt, David. 2001. “Being Constructive about Nature.” In Social Nature: Theory, Practice, and Politics, edited by Noel Castree and Bruce Braun, 22–40. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Denzin, Norman. 1995. “Messy Methods for Communication Research.” Journal of Communication 45 (5): 177–84. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dev, Sarker D., and Elske van de Fliert. 2023. “Discourses on Gender in Climate Change Adaptation Projects of Bangladesh: New Dimensions or Reinscribing the Old?” Journal of Language and Politics 22 (5): 707–29. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Djoudi, Houria, Bruno Locatelli, Chloe Vaast, Kiran Asher, Maria Brockhaus, and Bimbika Basnett Sijapati. 2016. “Beyond Dichotomies: Gender and Intersecting Inequalities in Climate Change Studies.” Ambio 45 (S3): 248–62. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Elmhirst, Rebecca. 2011. “Introducing New Feminist Political Ecologies.” Geoforum 42 (2): 129–32. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fairclough, Norman. 1992. “Intertextuality in Critical Discourse Analysis.” Linguistics and Education 4 (1): 269–93. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1993. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2000. New Labour, New Language. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001. Language and Power. Harlow: Pearson Education.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2003. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London & New York: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gaard, Greta. 2015. “Ecofeminism and Climate Change.” Women’s Studies International Forum 49 (3): 20–33. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gay-Antaki, Miriam. 2020. “Feminist Geographies of Climate Change: Negotiating Gender at Climate Talks.” Geoforum 115 (10): 1–10. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gender Action Plan (GAP), Bonn, 15 November 2017, Decision 3/CP.23. [URL] 741
Gender Action Plan (GAP II), Madrid, 15 December 2019, Decision 3/CP.25. [URL]
Gonda, Noémi. 2016. “Climate Change, ‘Technology’ and Gender: ‘Adapting Women’ to Climate Change with Cooking Stoves and Water Reservoirs.” Gender, Technology and Development 20 (2): 149–68. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Guzzini, Stefano. 2000. “A Reconstruction of Constructivism in International Relations.” European Journal of International Relations 6 (2): 147–82. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hovorka, Alice. 2006. “Full Article: The No. 1 Ladies’ Poultry Farm: A Feminist Political Ecology of Urban Agriculture in Botswana.” A Journal of Feminist Geography 13 (2): 207–25.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Intermediate Review of the Implementation of the Gender Action Plan, Sharm el-Sheikh, 19 November 2022, Draft decision -/CP.27. [URL]
Jerneck, Anne. 2018. “What about Gender in Climate Change? Twelve Feminist Lessons from Development.” Sustainability 10 (3): 627. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kaijser, Anna, and Annica Kronsell. 2014. “Climate Change through the Lens of Intersectionality.” Environmental Politics 23 (3): 417–33. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kaur, Kuldip, Nalini Arumugam, and Norimah Yunus. 2013. “Beauty Product Advertisements: A Critical Discourse Analysis.” Asian Social Science 9 (2): 61–71. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krzyżanowski, Michał. 2020. “Normalization and the Discursive Construction of ‘New’ Norms and ‘New’ Normality: Discourse in the Paradoxes of Populism and Neoliberalism.” Social Semiotics 30 (4): 431–48. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kyoto Protocol, Kyoto, 11 December 1997, United Nations Treaty Series, registration no. A-30822. [URL]
Lima Work Programme on Gender (LWPG), Lima, 14 December 2014, Decision 18/CP.20. [URL]
MacGregor, Sherilyn. 2010. “‘Gender and Climate Change’: From Impacts to Discourses.” Journal of the Indian Ocean Region 6 (2): 223–38. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Machin, David, and Andrea Mayr. 2012. How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis: A Multimodal Introduction. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications Ltd.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Moeckli, Jane, and Bruce Braun. 2001. “Gendered Natures: Feminism, Politics and Social Nature.” In Social Nature: Theory, Practice and Politics, edited by Noel Castree and Bruce Braun, 112–32. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Onta, Nisha, and Bernadette P. Resurrección. 2011. “The Role of Gender and Caste in Climate Adaptation Strategies in Nepal: Emerging Change and Persistent Inequalities in the Far-Western Region.” Mountain Research and Development 31 (4): 351–56. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Paris Agreement, Paris, 12 December 2015, United Nations Treaty Series, registration no. I-54113. [URL]
Prugl, Elisabeth. 2010. “Feminism and the Postmodern State: Gender Mainstreaming in European Rural Development.” Signs 35 (2): 447–75. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Resurrección, Bernadette P. 2013. “Persistent Women and Environment Linkages in Climate Change and Sustainable Development Agendas.” Women’s Studies International Forum 40 (9): 33–43. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Singh, Chandni, Divya Solomon, and Nitya Rao. 2021. “How Does Climate Change Adaptation Policy in India Consider Gender? An Analysis of 28 State Action Plans.” Climate Policy 21 (7): 958–975. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sultana, Farhana. 2014. “Gendering Climate Change: Geographical Insights.” The Professional Geographer (3): 372–81. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Theys, Sarina. 2017. “Introducing Constructivism in International Relations Theory.” In International Relations Theory, edited by Stephen McGlinchey, Rosie Walters and Christian Scheinpflug, 36–42. Bristol: E-International Relations Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
True, Jacqui. 2010. “Mainstreaming Gender in International Institutions.” In Gender Matters in Global Politics: A Feminist Introduction to International Relations, edited by Laura J. Shepard, 189–203. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tschakert, Petra. 2012. “From Impacts to Embodied Experiences: Tracing Political Ecology in Climate Change Research.” Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography 112 (2): 144–58. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), New York, 9 May 1992, A/RES/48/189, United Nations Treaty Series, registration no. I-30822. [URL]
UN. 2016. “Climate Change.” [URL]
UN Women. 2020. “In Focus: Climate Action by, and for, Women.” [URL]
UNFCCC. 2019. “Strengthened 5-Year Action Plan on Gender Adopted at COP25.” [URL]
. n.d.a. “What Is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change?” Accessed 18 May 2022. [URL]
. n.d.b. “Mothers Out Front: Mobilizing for a Liveable Climate.” Accessed 20 June 2022. [URL]
. n.d.c. “Women’s Action Towards Climate Resilience for Urban Poor in South Asia.” Accessed 20 June 2022. [URL]
WGC. 2022. “What should you know about the UNFCCC Gender Action Plan and the upcoming review?” [URL]
White, Louise G. 1994. “Policy Analysis as Discourse.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 13 (3): 506–25. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zhang, Yongxiang, Lei Huang, Qingchen Chao, Qingwen Yang, and Chao Chen. 2021. “Analysis of Gender Equality in Climate Governance.” China Journal of Population, Resources and Environment 19 (1): 98–103. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue