Social Reproduction and Climate Adaptation: Gender, Climate Change, and Agriculture in Cameroon and Canada


Mbuli Shei Clodine, University of Lethbridge

Climate change has significant social impacts on agricultural producers in the Global North and South. Dominant discourses on climate change adaptation in agriculture rarely consider how gender affects farmers’ everyday experiences of climate variability or climate hazards like drought, fire, and flooding. Rigid gender roles, power imbalance, and women’s multiple roles in most agricultural communities affect their involvement in everyday farm management and consequently their responses to climate change. Using the concept of social reproduction, this chapter discusses the gender dimensions of agriculture in the Global North and South, focusing particularly on how gender relations, including women’s social reproduction work, affects farmers’ experiences of, and adaptation to, climate change. It is based on an in-depth qualitative study of 48 family farmers in Maple Creek, Saskatchewan, Canada and Santa, North West Region, Cameroon. We argue that, for sustainable climate change adaptation, women must actively participate in climate adaptation decisions. However, transformative climate adaptation requires attention to the value of women’s work, both ‘productive’ and ‘reproductive’, and an equalization of divisions of labour and power.

Non-presenting author: Amber Fletcher, University of Regina, Saskatchewan

This paper will be presented at the following session: