Intersectionality, climate and gender
ModulesIntersectionality, climate and gender
This activity builds on the Earth to Research podcast episode “Planetary health part 2: climate gender and intersectionality” which explores how research can respond to the ecological crisis and broader societal challenges. After engaging with this resource learners will be able to:
1. Explain intersectionality as a framework of power and injustice
2. Analyse how climate change interacts with social inequalities
3. Critically evaluate assumptions in research
4. Apply systems thinking to climate, gender, and health challenges.
5. Reflect on one’s own positionality and role as a researcher, including how personal, institutional, and cultural backgrounds influence knowledge production.What is this about?
This activity is based on an episode of the Earth to Research podcast, which explores how research can respond to the ecological crisis and broader societal challenges. In this episode health psychologist Dr. Petra Verdonk explores what planetary health means for all researchers, practitioners, and change-makers.
Speaking with host Lucy Sabin, Verdonk connects intersectionality, gender mainstreaming, and reflexivity to wider movements in policy, action research, and climate campaigning.
The podcast episode explores how climate change, gender, and health are deeply interconnected and must be understood through an intersectional and systems-oriented lens. Petra Verdonk argues that much research and policy is still based on narrow and “skewed” knowledge systems that assume neutrality while in fact reflecting limited and dominant perspectives. She emphasises that simply including more women or marginalised groups is not enough; instead, research frameworks themselves need to be critically rethought. The conversation highlights how climate change intensifies existing inequalities and cannot be addressed through purely technical or individual-focused solutions, such as simply “greening” current systems like transport or healthcare. Instead, it calls for
reimagining these systems entirely, considering context, place, and lived experience. The episode also discusses intersectionality as a theory rooted in injustice and inequality rather than just a method for categorising differences, and stresses the importance of reflexivity, positional awareness, and learning from diverse communities in both research and policy-making.Listen to the podcast
Listen to the following episode:
Planetary Health, Part 2: Climate, Gender,& Intersectionality
Who is missing from the design?
Take a research project (real or hypothetical) and answer:
Systems thinking exercise
Choose a climate-related solution (e.g. electric cars, urban transport, energy transition policy) and reflect:
- What existing system does this solution assume as “normal”?
- Who benefits from the current design of this system?
- What would it look like if the system were redesigned from the perspective of: children, care workers or low-income urban residents
Intersectionality reflection
Reflection
