It’s not just about women: broadening perspectives in gendered environmental mobilities research

Understanding how gendered differences manifest in mobilities linked to environmental change is part of understanding the human experience of environmental change. To synthesize empirical research on how gender, environment, and mobilities interact and to identify priorities for future research, we perform a rigorous scoping review of 120 peer-reviewed scientific articles on the nexus. We present diverse findings across contexts but find that a common narrative in the evidence suggests that men are more likely to migrate in response to environmental changes while women are generally more immobile due to pre-established social norms including gender roles. In turn, this is found to exacerbate women’s vulnerabilities to environmental risks. While this holds true in certain contexts, many studies are women-centric and fail to move beyond the simplistic association of women with immobility, and immobility with vulnerability. Based on our analysis, we advocate for grounding empirical research in robust theoretical frameworks from rich traditions in gender studies, feminist scholarship, and gender and migration research. This approach would start with a shared acknowledgment that gender is socially constructed, relational, dynamic, and intersectional. This will, in turn, contribute to a more nuanced understanding of how social inequalities mitigate the relationship between mobilities and environmental change.