Whose Security are We Protecting in a Time of Climate Change? How Gender Bias Affects Human Security for Pacific Women

ABSTRACTIn the Pacific Islands region, many leaders are resisting the global inequalities and fossil fuel burning that drive climate change, and are promoting human rather than state-centric security. Within this region, Pacific women contribute significantly to human security through top-down protection and bottom-up empowerment. Yet institutional bias at global and local levels means that efforts to address women’s climate vulnerabilities risk simply adding women into existing forums with a masculine and Eurocentric bias. Drawing on desktop sources, this essay demonstrates how gendered spaces and institutional bias lead to a devaluation or marginalisation of Pacific women’s work and interests and that such bias is a product of contemporary and historical colonial legacies. This means that women may be included but policy will still have gendered impacts. Ensuring human security is gender equal requires examination of institutional processes and unwritten rules to determine whose security is truly being protected. AcknowledgementWith thanks to Dr Kerryn Baker, Dr Tamara Nair and Angela Terrill for providing feedback on this paper.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. The Blue Pacific narrative draws on Hau’ofa’s reconstruction of the region’s size, dynamism and environmental custodianship as a counterpoint to Euro-American centric perspectives of the islands as small, remote and static (Citation1994).2. https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/articles/2007-06-16/climate-culprit-darfur