Description
Policy research and programme evaluations continuously demonstrate that climate change policies and sustainable development interventions struggle to sufficiently meet transformative gender mainstreaming goals. In part, this has been linked to policies favouring market-based technical solutions, with limited understanding of structural and social dimensions of climate change. Through the concept of social reproduction, this paper examines how gender norms impact the capacity of rural households in Zimbabwe to build resilience to climate change and other multiple ongoing crises. It argues that climate change policy needs to pay closer attention to how variegated intersecting structures and norms are co-constituted, and to address gender norms more deliberately. Based on interviews and focus group discussions with rural women, the study presents qualitative data on how climate change affects the labour of women and men differently and how study participants understand this difference in relation to social norms around the gender division of labour. The findings of this study are relevant to understanding social change as an important aspect of climate change interventions.
