Abstract
Gender issues are present in waste management, from daily handling activities through to decision-making processes. In waste education programs, the disregard for views of and contribution by women has resulted in strategies that do not comprehensively address the waste issue, preventing long-standing and sustainable outcomes, while increasing existing gender inequities. Three critical waste matters on education and gender were identified: (1) lack of meaningful involvement and participation of women (and other vulnerable groups) throughout the decision-making processes; (2) lack of inclusion of gender-specific designs and gender-sensitive approaches in the information and education materials; and (3) tendency to devise strategies directed to women only, while exempting the other stakeholders from their responsibilities. This paper presents a closer look into the relationship between waste education and gender, with a proposal of a participatory framework for gender mainstreaming in waste education programs. It includes components to assess the promoting entity of the waste education program and all stages of the program. The framework represents a novel theory and practice contribution for waste education development, to support academics, practitioners, and policymakers, in the quest of achieving equitable and sustainable waste management systems for all.
Highlights
On the gender-and-environment nexus, years of feminist theory have been calling for the development of “frameworks and perspectives that allow an understanding that women and men are affected by and have important roles to play in, enabling environmental sustainability” [1].It is argued in [2] that to improve the effectiveness of laws and regulations, the specific target groups affected—women and men with all identified gender aspects of cultural diversity—should be addressed appropriately with accompanying measures
Even though women manage waste at home, there are underlying issues of power dynamics within all households. These issues can limit women’s control and access to waste and create conflicts of interest, when waste becomes a source of income [11,28,31]. Another important aspect is the change of the responsibility and ownership that occurs, when the waste goes from being a household property to entering the existing waste management system, by being placed in the outside boundaries, termed ‘point of set-out.’
We describe the conceptual framework designed as a gender mainstreaming tool for waste education programs, based on the literature on waste education, and gender and waste
Summary
On the gender-and-environment nexus, years of feminist theory have been calling for the development of “frameworks and perspectives that allow an understanding that women and men are affected by and have important roles to play in, enabling environmental sustainability” [1]. It is argued in [2] that to improve the effectiveness of laws and regulations, the specific target groups affected—women and men with all identified gender aspects of cultural diversity—should be addressed appropriately with accompanying measures. The concluding points and limitations of the paper are summarized in Sections 5 and 6
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