Week 5- Women, Disaster, and Reproductive Justice

Week 5- Women, Disaster, and Reproductive Justice

This week's readings touched upon how climate change effects groups of people disproportionately, and how this translates into environmental justice. The readings specifically touched on women and the environment, and how women are affected differently than men when disaster strikes. 

Infertile Ground by Jade Sasser studies the intersection of populationism and the environment. Populationism is the idea that if humans can stick to Thomas Malthus's predictions about resources and the population, we may be able to survive longer than his findings suggest.  She speaks about the discourse surrounding population as it results to the environment: many believe that targeting overpopulation is the most efficient way to stifle climate change. Some environmental feminists take issue with this because it suggests that we police womens' uteruses as a means of policing climate change, which is, essentially, very anti-feminist. Sasser asserts that population control is too simple a solution for such a complex concern.

The Women of Katrina is a more broad piece of work which covers environmental racism, justice, and sexism. It discusses the erasure of communities such as Latinos, Vietnamese, and Native Americans in the discourse following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Much of the news coverage ignored the struggles of these populations even though they were among the hardest hit with the fewest resources available to aid in their recovery. Vietnamese people of the Versailles community, specifically, live in disproportionate amounts of poverty compared to the average New Orleans resident, which creates a predisposition to disaster.  After Katrina, debris from other communities was dumped at Chef Menteur without explanation, causing health hazards for the nearby Vietnamese population, which is a prime example of environmental racism in the works. Vietnamese women turned to activism to fight the landfill, and eventually stopped it. 

Key Words:

Versailles- A community of Vietnamese people in New Orleans East who fought against a landfill in their community following Hurricane Katrina. 

Environmental Racism- People of color are more likely to bear the brunt of climate change.

Environmental Justice- Seeking justice for the fact that some people are disproportionately affected by climate change. 

Chef Menteur Landfill-A landfill which appeared in the Versailles Community after Katrina, where debris and environmental toxins threatened the surrounding community.