Power, perception, and adaptation: Exploring gender and social-environmental risk perception in northern Guanajuato, Mexico

Abstract

This paper examines how gender relations within rural communities in north-central Mexico affect women’s perceptions of and responses to environmental and social risks. Several studies currently exist which suggest various reasons as to how people especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change perceive their risks, and how this influences their responses. In this paper, I take a feminist approach to questions of social–environmental risks and adaptation to argue that risk perception is tightly linked to knowledge production, and knowledge production is a power-laden process involving the constant negotiation of resources, responsibilities and knowledge. I base this argument on the results of fieldwork conducted from September 2009 to May 2010 with women residents of two ejidos in northern Guanajuato, Mexico. In drawing from feminist political ecology studies, I intend to show how gender, environmental knowledge, risk perception and thus, adaptation are constituted by and embedded in social relations of power.