Figure 1. Meme of a corporate lady assuming gender and sex are the same. Source: YAF, 2019.
“Gender and sex are basically the same, they just tell you if you are male or female.”
I am fairly sure many of us have heard something along these lines before, where people often assume gender and sex are the same thing and find the distinction between the two insignificant.
However, unlike the corporate lady in the meme (Figure 1), we will learn the difference between the two terms and how this distinction has a key role to play in pollution studies.
Figure 2. Infographic on the difference between gender and sex. Source: Canadian Institute of Health Research, 2020.
This infographic by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (2020) provides a clear explanation on the distinction between gender and sex, where gender is underpinned by socially constructed norms while sex relates to biological differences (Figure 2). For example, biological differences in terms of sex could relate to how male and females differ in terms of lung function when faced with air pollution (Clougherty, 2009). On the flip side, gendered analysis would point towards variations in activity patterns or spaces occupied for different periods of time, as seen in the previous post on indoor air pollution (Clougherty, 2009). The inclusion of a gendered based analysis goes beyond the binary of male and female, which is often reinforced by analysis that focus on biological difference (Bolte et al., 2019).
But what does it really mean to include gender in pollution studies?
The research paper by Dębiak et al. (2019) brings up the importance of accounting for intersectionality and everyday lived experiences in the study. Intersectionality refers to the complex relationship across various social categories, such as gender, race, class, age and more, where these categories are non-additive (Valentine, 2007). For example, the lived experiences of women in lower-income countries would differ from those who lived in higher income countries. This is once again observed in the previous post, where women in lower income-countries suffered from the severe effects of indoor air pollution due to the inability to afford alternative forms of fuel for household chores, while subjected to gendered norms that women remain the caretakers in the home space. In contrast, women in higher income countries who can afford alternative forms of fuel, do not suffer from the same impacts of indoor air pollution.
Hopefully, the future blog posts will provide further insight into how gendered analysis can provide a deeper and more accurate representation of the impacts of pollution on varying groups of people.
Reference
Bolte, G., Kraus, U., Jacke, K., Groth, K., Dandolo, L., Palm, K., Kolossa-Gehring, M., Debiak, M., & Schneider, A. (2019). New approaches for integrating sex/gender into Environmental Health Research. Environmental Epidemiology, 3, 33. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.ee9.0000605988.73810.8f
Canadian Institutes of Health Research. (2020). What is gender? What is sex? CIHR. Retrieved January 30, 2023, from https://cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/48642.html
Clougherty, J. E. (2010). A growing role for gender analysis in Air Pollution Epidemiology. Environmental Health Perspectives, 118(2), 167–176. https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.0900994
Dębiak, M., Groth, K., Kolossa-Gehring, M., Sauer, A., Tobollik, M., & Wintermeyer, D. (2019). Sex and gender approaches in environmental health research: Two exemplary case studies of the German Environment Agency. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 44(2), 114–130. https://doi.org/10.1080/03080188.2019.1603860
Valentine, G. (2007). Theorizing and researching intersectionality: A challenge for feminist geography*. The Professional Geographer, 59(1), 10–21. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9272.2007.00587.x