The topic of gendered analysis and its role in climate change has become an important focus for the United Nations and other international agencies, making it a rich topic for exploration and research. The government of Mozambique (Africa) has taken the initiative and asked Bentley University professor Joni Seager to help develop a national strategy and five-year government policy plan to address gender and climate change. Seager will travel to Mozambique several times during the next few months to work with the Environmental Ministry on the project.

"Mozambique is quite progressive in their thinking on this issue," says Seager, professor and chair of global studies at Bentley. "Very few governments have developed policy vehicles on gender and environment, although more are likely to do so in the next few years."

Seager is one of a small group of scholars working on analytical and theoretical explorations of the social -- and gendered -- nature of climate change. The issue is increasingly emphasized in a United Nations call for action, she notes, citing a recent report from the United Nations Population Fund on gender and climate change.

"Most environmental 'physical' things -- including climate change -- happen in the physical realm, but are actually rooted in social issues," Seager continues. "That is, they are caused or solved by social efforts, have impact on social efforts or prompt policies and actions. And once you start talking about social arrangements, there is always a gendered dimension."

According to a report done for the UK Department for International Development, a gender-sensitive perspective on climate relates to issues such as health, agriculture, water, wage labor, natural disasters and migration. Due to gender inequality in poor and rural areas, women may play a crucial role but their social positioning is often supportive and reproductive, with less of a voice on public economic issues. Assuming primary responsibility for their families' subsistence, however, means that climate change can affect their ability to find clean drinking water, for example.

About Joni Seager: Joni Seager is a scholar and activist in feminist geography, international women's studies, and global environmental policy. In the environmental field, she is a pioneer in bringing feminist perspectives to bear on global environmental policy and analysis. Her recent research includes a project with the nongovernmental organization AIDS-Free World to explore global policies and the social dimensions of the HIV-AIDS epidemic. She has also studied gender and sustainable water management in Mongolia, and consulted for the United Nations on various gender and environmental policy projects.

Her work on the international status of women is wide ranging, but Professor Seager is best known for the award-winning The Atlas of Women in the World (Penguin, 2009), now in its fourth edition. Another of her 10 books is the industry classic Earth Follies: Coming to Feminist Terms with the Global Environmental Crisis (Routledge, 1994). She is an elected member of the Scientific Steering Committee for Global Environmental Change and Human Security Project, sponsored by the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change; she also co-founded the nonprofit Center for New Words. Professor Seager earned a PhD at Clark University.