Inherited inequalities: intergenerational gender norms and the non-migration of women in a changing climate

Abstract

Socio-cultural divisions of roles, tasks, and expectations reinforce societal norms surrounding gender. In many contexts, individuals enact and execute gendered scripts (consciously or not) in ways that create and maintain a social order that favors men and masculinity over women and femininity. This order serves to reinforce historical gender inequalities and divisions. As with other gender norms, gender ideologies surrounding migration decision-making persist from past generations, shaping present-day mobility dynamics. These gendered mobility norms can be rigid, failing to account for changing climate conditions. Intergenerational gendered norms surrounding migration are therefore significant in shaping patterns of migration and non-migration across gendered lines, resulting in unequal distributions of climate risk and unequal access to migration or non-migration as adaptation strategies. This position paper advocates for a framework to explain the intergenerational non-migration of women in the context of environmental risk.