Abstract

‘Women carry the weight of a falling sky’, writes Barbara Kingsolver in Ms. magazine, referring to the heavy burden that falls unequally on women’s shoulders to respond to the life-threatening risks associated with escalating climate change (2015:43). ‘From the Andes to the South Asian tropics to the African Plains’, she continues, women from impoverished and vulnerable communities in the Global South rise up to deal with the problems of ever-increasing floods, droughts, food and fuel shortages, and higher rates of infectious diseases and other health crises brought about by warming temperatures and increasingly unpredictable weather (45). Not only are women the first responders, Kingsolver contends, but they are often the first to adapt to climate change ‘bringing outsized energy’ and creative solutions to mitigate its effects and to build ‘resilience’ (47).