Women and the environment
Imgsrc: http://blog.worldagroforestry.org/index.php/2014/10/09/from-energy-poverty-towards-sustainable-tree-based-bioenergy/
In poor countries like Kenya, women are often sustained by the forests around them. Moreover, followed by the colonial period, women have taken over the role of males in the rural areas to become the key providers of food, fuel and water, while males head out to the urban areas for formal employment.
The forests provided them with wood fuel for cooking and to keep their homes warm, medicinal herbs, fruits and nuts to be sold and fresh water. Kenyan government had been converting forests land into agricultural and residential use, leading to severe negative impact on the environment such as soil erosion and farmland being converted into desert-like soil. The loss of forests started jeopardising the women’s livelihood, the health of their families and the environment in general.
Hence in Kenya women are the ones that are directly exposed to such ecological stressors, because they are the ones who walk for hours looking for water, who fetch firewood, who provide food for their families.
Gender bias
Imgsrc: https://www.coolearth.org/2016/03/mud-stoves-empowering-women-in-dr-congo/
In addition to the hardships they have to go through, women are often not allow basic human rights and freedom during reproduction. Women are also often denied of self-determination and self-fulfillment. They are also denied the rights for land ownership and participation in community decision making.
Imgsrc: http://www.scidev.net/sub-saharan-africa/food-security/news/female-households-food-insecurity.html
When the government introduced cash crops into Kenya, it became a way of earning money, but it became the ¨man¨ crops as the men where the one making the money. Women, on the other hand, were doing all the work and were financially dependent on the men. Moreover, due to poor farming practices, the men did not leave spaces for food to be grown. This affected many women as there was an artificial shortage of food, women had to buy food instead of growing them now. The women were becoming marginalized in areas where they once had dominance.
Underlying the hardships suffered by the poor – environmental degradation, deforestation and food insecurity – were deeper issues of lack of control and power over their life and deprivation of rights and privileges due to poor governance and lack of democracy.