Sustainable Futures and the importance of Gender

The 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals identify gender equality as a key goal for sustainable futures. This panel of experts examines the importance of gender, globally, nationally and locally, as we develop social and political structures to achieve long term sustainability. The panellists interrogate the critical role of gender interventions as personal, communal and global.

Sustainable futures and the importance of gender flyer

Janelle Weissman, Executive Director, UN Women National Committee Australia

What’s gender got to do with it?  The SDGs and the 2030 Agenda

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offer a roadmap for every country in the world to advance peace, prosperity and to protect the planet. Different to the MDGs, gender is central to each of the 17 goals. Ms Weissman will speak about the importance of and substance behind the standalone gender goal, and why applying a gender lens to the achievement of each of the SDGs will be critical to our success, locally, nationally and globally.

Professor Margaret Alston, OAM, Monash University

Gender, Sustainability and Climate in Australia and the Asia Pacific

Using recent research on water restructuring in the Murray Darling Basin, Professor Alston will explore impacts on affected dairy communities and the ways in which complex and precarious gendered livelihood strategies are emerging. She highlights the importance of gendered analyses of climate change and disaster situations in order to understand critical impacts and challenges in environmental and social change.  

Dr Yolande Strengers, Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT

Plugging the Wife Drought: Smart homes and gendered futures

Sustainable futures and the importance of gender’ relates to how futuristic global visions of the smart home are romanticising and reproducing traditional gender roles (aiming to fix Annabel Crabb’s ‘Wife Drought’, whilst simultaneously generating new forms of domestic labour that are, ironically, more likely to be performed by men. They are also reproducing masculine ideals of sustainability, such as automated appliances and detailed consumption feedback designed for ‘Resource Man’. The key challenge is ensuring that we bring women’s voices to the technology table.

Moderator: Associate Professor Jo Lindsay, Sociology, Monash University; Ph: 9905 2425