Women as Changemakers: Climate Shocks & Gendered Political Agency

• In Event: Women and Institutions

Abstract

How does exposure to an exogenous shock---climate change-induced drought---change political engagement to demand fundamental redistribution of political rights, economic resources, and social responsibilities by female citizens? Severe drought disproportionately increases the risks and responsibilities women bear for ensuring personal and familial survival, and thus may change women's attitudes about the optimal distribution of political, economic, and social resources. This intuition follows evidence that state-led redistribution of wealth is triggered by mass conscription for war, which disproportionately harms the least wealthy (Scheve and Stasavage, 2016, 2012). Assuming that climate shocks have similarly disruptive effects, then it should encourage those who pay the highest cost---here, women---to demand fundamental redistribution of resources. To test this hypothesis, the project conducts experiments embedded in surveys with 3,000 citizens, mainly female, residing in rural Bangladesh. Studying a country where extreme vulnerabilities to climate change-induced shocks exceptionally high levels of women's political empowerment, this survey experiment uniquely enables identification of women's ground-level activism to combat climate change and how they overcome the resistance such challenges frequently inspire.

Author

• Rachel E. Brule, Boston University