On the sidelines of the International Women’s Rights Day-xsthe City of Geneva offers every year to explore a thematic from the angle of gender and equality.
There Equality Week bends down, March 1 to 10, 2024on the numerous intersections between environmental issues and gender inequalities.
Who is most impacted by climate change? What are the links between patriarchy and the current ecological situation? Who bears the mental burden of caring for the planet? How can we rethink our relationship with life? How can we bring together the struggles for equality and those for the preservation of the environment? Questions at the heart of current social, political and media concerns, in Switzerland as elsewhere, and which will be addressed through various formats.
Convergence of crises and struggles
The climate crisis, like many other phenomena, is not gender neutral. If it obviously affects populations as a whole, women and gender minorities are impacted in a specific way. Several studies have shown that in Europe heat waves have a greater impact on older women, firstly for physiological reasons, but also because they tend to be more isolated and insecure. They are also less represented in decision-making processes related to the environment, even though they statistically pollute less and are more involved in traditional tasks related to care, both for others and for the planet.
Alfonso Gomez, Mayor of the City of Geneva in charge of equality, underlines that “climate change reinforces inequalities, and vice versa. This observation, often highlighted during citizen mobilizations such as feminist or climate strikes, must push us to act for a society that is both more united, inclusive and ecological. Gender equality constitutes a central axis of the ecological transition and should be taken into greater account.” Sami Kanaan, Administrative Advisor in charge of culture, insists “on the need to take into account the need to propose other models, to rethink our imagination and thus participate in changing the paradigm, with the precious support of books and more largely culture, whether in terms of ecological issues or gender issues.
An intersectional program
This 10th edition, organized jointly by the municipal libraries and the Agenda 21-Sustainable City Service as well as numerous partner organizationsis thus at the crossroads of social and environmental issues, with programming for all audiencesof the school workshops and the publication of a bibliography.
Among the highlights, the French journalist Victory Tuaillon will open Equality Week with a public recording of his podcast “Doing Us Justice” dedicated to environmental and feminist justice including Léna Lazaremember of the Earth Uprisings. Fatima Ouassak, founder of the first house of popular ecology in France, will present her work For a pirate ecology and various workshops will allow each ex to take up these themes, reflect on them collectively and participate in the quest for solutions. Finally, a round table will explore gender and environmental issues in an agricultural field under tension with a global context provided by Joanna Bourke Martignoni, researcher at IHEID.
A thematic bibliography is also specially published for the occasion and highlights the richness of the funds of the municipal libraries, the Filigrane Library and the Libraries of the University of Geneva. Resources to inform yourself and get moving to act on the present and build the world of tomorrow.
Program for Equality Week March 1 to 10: www.week-egalite.ch
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