Talk:Climate change and gender

For future editors

Hello all! Because I started this page as an assignment for a class, I have not had time to expand it as much as I would like. If anyone is interested in this topic and/or improving this page, I suggest looking at the intersections of climate change and gender with nutrition and healthcare. Those are two subjects that the users below suggested I address and that I agree are very important, but that I did not read as in-depth about. Let me know if I can be of any help! Weatherby551 (talk) 02:25, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Peer Review #1

Weatherby551, your article is fantastic! It's clearly organized (including the Case Studies section) and the subject matter is very current. I just have a few pieces of advice:

• Expand the lead section. You could put a few sentences about how the effects vary due to different levels of access to resources. You could also discuss some of the policy solutions without getting into too much detail.
• I noticed that in a lot of places you make claims without a warrant besides the link to the source (e.g. "Women and children in developed and developing countries are at higher risk of sexual abuse during and after natural disasters than before," "As climate change progresses, access to and salinization of water sources is becoming a problem in Bangladesh," etc.). I would add an explanation, like they're at higher risk of sexual abuse because the destruction triggers a breakdown of law & order.
  • I'd suggest putting more concrete facts & figures detailing the marginalization of women (the article just talks about "economic and social rights" and "social standing") to warrant those statements.
  • How does climate change cause natural disasters and flooding? You don't need a ton of detail, but you want some explanation in case the reader doesn't know much about climate change.
  • How does climate change impact agriculture/reduce yields? Desertification, flooding washes away soil, etc.?
• Does women's lack of access to healthcare and proper nutrition make them weaker/more vulnerable to things like hyerthermia and heat stroke? Are any tropical diseases that women are more vulnerable to becoming more prevalent because of climate change? The impacts you have are great, but healthcare/nutrition was the first thing that popped into my head when I read your article title.
• The diction and tone of the article are neutral. The only suggestion I would make would be to acknowledge that climate change is controversial outside the scientific community in either the Background section or the Climate change policy section.
• For images, look on Wikimedia Commons for pictures of women in the Bangladeshi floods, rural South Africa, or a region that's undergoing desertification (the Sahel). You could put a picture of a climate change policy summit in the Climate change policy section. I strongly recommend you put a photo in the lead section too.

Overall, great work! This is an extremely important subject and you've given readers a lot of information about it. I can't wait to read your final article! Nadhika99 (talk) 23:25, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

P.S. - I added the course banner to your talk page. If you added the article to any WikiProjects, you might want to put those banners on your talk page also. Nadhika99 (talk) 23:30, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Response

Nadhika, thank you for your detailed comments! These are really helpful. I agree that the lead section could be longer and more in-depth. I do think I need to support the statements in the article in more detail and make more explicit connections between different ideas; I will use the strategies you suggested to do that, explaining the causal relationship between climate change and weather patterns/natural disasters, between malnutrition and disease, etc.

In terms of images, I have already worked on adding some to my article in response to the peer workshops and have run into a bit of trouble. I spent some time looking around in the Wikimedia Commons and had a difficult time finding images that I felt directly related to my article. I inserted one already (as you can see) and I had uploaded a photo that I thought was under the correct Creative Commons license on Flickr, but later learned that I was wrong. I will try to find some of the images and figures you suggested, but I am limited by what already exists in the Wikimedia Commons/what other sources I am able to use on Wikipedia.

Thanks for your help! Weatherby551 (talk) 16:41, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

P.S. Thanks for adding the banner! I had planned on doing that before I turned in this next assignment, so you just made my life a little easier. Weatherby551 (talk) 01:43, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Peer Review 2

• Firstly, I would recommend adding citation(s) in the leading paragraph, and I also agree that it could be expanded upon.

• Very well written, but I also agree that more figures and statistics could be used to demonstrate the significance of the issue.

• In the section on policy suggestions, you mention "scholars," and "organizations" but its really vague. It would be beneficial to add specific names to these, so the reader can associate these ideas with someone/something, and it will add credibility.
  • Also you mention the UNDP, but do not define this, or link it to any other wikipedia articles, so anyone who does not already know what the UNDP is might be confused.

• I really liked the case studies section because it showed specific examples of how the interaction of climate change and gender plays out within a certain context, and it helped to demonstrate your overall point.

• In general, the article is well-written and does a good job remaining neutral, while explaining the issue in depth. All of the sections do a good job explaining the relevancy of the issue. I would recommend adding a visual representation that could connect the idea of gender with climate change.

ChloeCBlaskiewicz (talk) 15:23, 8 April 2013 (UTC)ChloeCBlaskiewicz

Response

Hi Chloe,

Thanks for your comments! I actually thought that leaving out citations for the very broad statements lead sections are usually comprised of was a Wikipedia convention, but I will certainly look into that and add citations wherever possible. I agree that I am too vague in the policy section. I plan on revising to mention specific organizations and people. (Thanks for pointing out that I forgot to define UNDP--I didn't notice that!) As I told Nadhika above, I have had some difficulties finding relevant illustrations that I feel add to the article in the Wikimedia Commons, but I will do my best.

Thanks again for the help! Weatherby551 (talk) 01:40, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Review comments

Here are some comments; I hope these are useful.

• The convention is to have no space between a reference tag and the preceding word or punctuation, and no space between consecutive reference tags. I asked someone else to fix this, since there are tools to do this automatically, and it's been fixed now, but I thought I'd mention it so you're aware of it.
• The lead should be a bit longer than it currently is. The lead is an introduction to and summary of the whole article, so it should touch on all the main points, and the longer the article, the longer the lead. I think you have enough material here to justify at least two paragraphs, each at least twice the length of the current single paragraph. Incidentally, I saw the discussion above about whether to cite the lead; leads aren't immune to the rule about requiring a citation for anything likely to be challenged, but it's quite rare to see citations for anything except very controversial facts in leads, because the details are provided (and cited) in the body of the article. Since climate change does attract controversy, someone might eventually challenge something in the lead and force a citation to be added. Till then, I wouldn't bother, though there's no harm in adding them if you feel like it.
• The main improvement that I think the article needs now is copyediting. At the start of the article there are some sentences that are a bit obscurely written. Some examples:
  • "The causes and effects of climate change are directly impacting global ecosystems": the causes aren't impacting the ecosystems, just the effects -- or at least the causes only have an impact via the effects. And isn't this just a long way of saying "Climate change is affecting global ecosystems"?
  • "These climatic changes have unequal effects on different populations based on their vulnerability": Here, I'm not sure that the meaning is precise. Vulnerability isn't the only thing that governs the size of the effect of climate change; there are probably populations in the US that are not vulnerable that will benefit from improved agricultural yields, per the map included in the article. Surely you're referring only to negative effects? Would it be more accurate to say something like "These climatic changes will cause the most harm to the most vulnerable populations"?
  • "The vulnerability of an individual or group is their ability to cope with and adapt to climate change and is directly linked to access to resources." I don't think I understand this. Are you saying that women are more vulnerable than others in two ways: they are vulnerable in general because of reduced decision-making, reduced access to resources, and all the other ways in which women are not treated as the equals of men, but in addition to this there are specific vulnerabilities to some of the changes that climate change brings, such as the increased risk of natural disasters and consequent increased likelihood of sexual abuse? Or are you saying that vulnerability, for the purposes of this article, is defined solely by the ability to cope with climate change? I would have thought the first was the intended meaning, but I don't think this sentence says that.
• The map indicates that some areas of the world (looks like mostly the developed countries) can expect improved agricultural yields if global warming continues as expected. Does this lead to positive predictions for women in those areas? Are there any areas where the impact of global warming is expected to be beneficial for women?
• The article mentions a "2005 Poverty Reduction Strategy" paper, but doesn't explain what it is.
• There are several places where I think many readers would benefit from a touch more explanation than you currently have. For example, "The UNDP mandates mainstreaming gender in all adaptation measures" -- most readers are going to wonder what on earth it would mean to "mainstream gender". I think a parenthetical example is likely to be enough. Similarly, "Women are essential components of a response to climate change" is a generality; what does that actually mean in practice in these policy planning discussions?
• You have a lot of short paragraphs. I think this is because you have a paragraph break where you have a change of topic of some kind. Too many short paragraphs makes for a choppy reading experience, though. Can you find a way to assemble some of the material into longer paragraphs but looking to see what unifying statement or theme there is among the material? For example, the two sentences I quoted above, "The UNDP mandates mainstreaming gender ..." and "Women are essential components of ..." seem quite closely related; could you reformulate the flow in that section to bring that material into a single paragraph?
• Similarly, I think short sections aren't desirable. I'd suggest getting rid of the "Global responses to climate change" subheading; let that material simply follow the first paragraph in that section. I'd also suggest merging the "mitigation" and "adaptation" sections under a single "Mitigation and adaptation efforts"

I'll add more comments later if I have time. Interesting article; thanks for asking me to review it! Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:48, 14 April 2013 (UTC)