Political economy of gender Current Event 26 September 2021 Women’s voices at UN General Assembly few, but growing Less than 10% of speakers over the first four days of the UN General Assembly have been women. Still, this is four more than last year’s total of nine women, and the total of women heads of state in the UN has increase to 24 from last years 21. The main topics of the Assembly so far have been climate change and COVID-19 with an emphasis on how they are affecting vulnerable populations like women and other minorities. President Zuzana Caputova of Slovakia said, “We cannot save our planet if we leave out the vulnerable—the women, the girls, the minorities.” The UN Security Council also addressed climate change, citing its potential to increase violence as global temperatures rise. Also discussed were Albania and Serbia’s tensions over Kosovo, and Pakistan’s troubling geographic position between Afghanistan, which recently fell to the Taliban, and India, who they have had tensions with since they gained independence from Great Britain. https://apnews.com/article/united-nations-general-assembly-climate-change-bangladesh-europesheikh-hasina-b1d9ef2335e0776e2703805a570e2e8f Questions: When we spoke about intersectionality, one of the issues impeding intersectional advancement was more solidarity among class than gender, are there similar or parallel obstacles in the fight against climate change (thinking back to the washing machine video)? UN sustainability goal number 5 of 17 is gender equality, yet less than ten percent of the speakers at the UN General Assembly were women. Going back to what we discussed last week about which comes first, economic success or gender parity, do you think that gender parity is required for an effective approach to climate change? Or is a government or society focused on innovative and effective solutions for climate and environmental issues inevitably going to trend towards gender parity? Are there any other ties back to past readings?
