Gendering Agenda 21: women's involvement in setting the environmental agenda

Abstract

The Agenda 21 programme agreed at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) made explicit provision for fully participatory environmental decision-making. Specifically, this was to include women, along with children and ‘indigenous peoples’. Research conducted into women's participation in environmental programmes in the UK suggests that very little specific effort has been made to encourage women to participate in the formulation of Local Agenda 21 (LA21) programmes. Moreover, research into reactions to environmental problems, and into local government strategies for dealing with such, reveals that there is both a distinctive set of environmental concerns and an approach to these which arguably could be assigned to gender. This paper argues that LA21 represents an ambiguous area of policy formation, falling, as it does, between the public space of formal politics and the intermediate space of the neighbourhood or community. Whilst this will affect all who engage in the process, it has particular implications for women who are active in the informal community, but who lack visibility in formal politics. The monitoring of the LA21 process in one West London borough is examined in order to observe women's participation. Whilst no generalizations can, or should, be made from these observations, reflections on this monitoring suggest areas which current environmental decision-makers might like to consider if they seriously intend participation to become a less gender-blind and a more democratic procedure. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.