Initial Assessment of Gender Considerations in Plastics Policy
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2023-08-31
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Abstract
Globally, women are disproportionately burdened and impacted by the harmful effects of plastic across the life cycle of products. These burdens vary across cultural, socioeconomic, and political contexts, and based on how women engage with plastic, but broadly include health and safety impacts, access to opportunities in the waste sector, and exposures to harmful plastic-associated chemicals. This initial assessment considers how women, people who are assigned female at birth and have been socialized as females, and/or female-identified people are considered in plastics policy scope and implementation.
Researchers identified 25 documents at the intersection of plastics policy and gender, indicating gender is rarely considered when crafting plastics policy. However, evidence of gender-differentiated impacts of plastics policy is emerging. Plastics bans, waste management policies, and economic development funds often ignore or do not consider women’s roles as heads of households or informal waste sector workers, both of which expose women to excesses of plastics and their negative effects.
Despite this, some policies that do consider gender were identified. Most are primarily focused on incorporating women in the waste management sector and alleviating the burden of low-income women from complying with plastic bag fees. None address the risks associated with chemical exposure across the plastics life cycle.
These policies, alongside expert interviews, suggest that the path toward tangible consideration of gender-differentiated impacts associated with plastic and plastics policies requires, at a minimum, ensuring the inclusion of women in policymaking, waste management industries, and research and development. The reviewed literature emphasizes that only when power structures are reexamined and corrected for will there be meaningful changes to the ways humanity designs plastics, manages waste, and informs the public about the products they consume.
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Dixon, Natalie, Melissa Skarjune, Sara Mason, Rachel Karasik and John Virdin (2023). Initial Assessment of Gender Considerations in Plastics Policy. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/31691.
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Sara Mason
Sara Mason joined the Ecosystem Services Program at the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability as a policy associate after graduating from Duke with a master’s degree in environmental management. Her work focuses on the interdisciplinary nature of biodiversity conservation and how that can be leveraged to engage the public and policy makers in conservation efforts. Prior to joining the Nicholas Institute, Sara worked in ecological field research and endangered animal rehabilitation.
John Virdin
John Virdin has over twenty years’ experience in studying and advising government policies to regulate human use of the oceans, particularly marine conservation policies to reduce poverty throughout the tropics. His focus has been largely on managing fisheries for food and livelihoods, expanding to broader ocean-based economic development policies, coastal adaptation and more recently reducing ocean plastic pollution.
Virdin directs the Ocean Policy Program at the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability, aiming to connect Duke University’s science and ideas to help policymakers solve ocean sustainability problems. He has collaborated in this effort with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the United Nations Environment Program, as well as regional organizations such as the Abidjan Convention secretariat, the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, the Sub-Regional Fisheries Commission of West Africa and the Parties to the Nauru Agreement for tuna fisheries management in the Western Pacific.
Virdin is an associate professor of the practice in marine science and conservation at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment. He co-created and teaches an introductory course for undergraduate students to understand the role of ocean policy in helping solve many of society’s most pressing development challenges on land.
Prior to coming to Duke in early 2015, he worked for 12 years at the World Bank, where his work led to the development of programs that provided more than $125 million in funding for improved fisheries management in six West African states and some $40 million for fisheries and ocean conservation in a number of Pacific Island states.
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