Climate change and sustainable technology: re-linking poverty, gender, and governance

Overview

This article examines the role of sustainable technology in tackling climate change in developing countries. Drawing on solar home systems in Bangladesh as an example, it argues that increasing women’s visibility in technology committees is not necessarily effective in challenging gender stereotypes. Crafting new rules may fail to confront power inequalities. Sustainable technology can exert additional workloads on women. This article proposes a gender-sensitive framework for technological interventions, suggesting that extra resources are needed to strengthen institutions at the post-project stage, and that developing alternative livelihood strategies with poor people is crucial to reduce their reliance on local elites for survival.

This article is hosted by our co-publisher Taylor & Francis. For the full table of contents for this and previous issues of this journal, please visit the Gender and Development website.