Chapter 1: Gender-Environment-Peace: Exploring the Links Through Problem-Posing

Peace studies as a field increasingly recognizes both gender and ecology as cross-cutting factors for theory and practice. So far, however, introductory texts have not drawn on the rich body of literature, policy, and practice linking gender analysis with environmental concerns.¹ The result is emerging literature and pedagogical strategies that integrate gender analysis into peace education and a separate emphasis on the links between environmental and peace education, but little attention to the connections among all three. Efforts to incorporate gender analysis into peacebuilding and development practices have been made through gender mainstreaming, the “process of incorporating a gender perspective to any … policy, legislation, or action in order to ensure gender inequalities are not perpetuated across institutional means” (Alston, 2014, p. 287). However, there remains much to unpack within institutional structures that perpetuate gender inequities and mask the particular needs of women. Students of peace may ultimately enter careers across a wide range of employment sectors that will immerse them in problems related to environmental crises;² they will need the capacity to think through the complexities of varied scenarios in which gender, environment, and peace intersect.