Gender and Wildfire
In pursuit of lifestyle change, affordable property, and proximity to nature, people from all walks of life are moving to the wildland-urban interface. Tragic wildfires and a predicted increase in high fire danger weather with climate change have triggered concern for the safety of such amenity-led migrants in wildfire-prone landscapes.
This book examines wildfire awareness and preparedness amongst women, men, households, communities and agencies at the interface between city and beyond. It does so through an examination of two regions where wildfires are common and disastrous, and where how to deal with them is a major political issue: southeast Australia and the west coast of the USA. It follows womens and mens stories of surviving, fighting, evacuating, living and working with wildfire to reveal the intimate inner workings of wildfire responseand especially the culturally and historically distinct gender relations that underpin wildfire resilience.
Wildfire is revealed as much more than a natural hazardit is far from gender-neutral. Rather, wildfire is an important means through which traditional gender roles and power relations are maintained despite changing social circumstances. Womens and mens subjectivities are shaped by varying senses of inclusion, exclusion, engagement and disengagement with wildfire management. This leads to the reproduction of gender identities with clear ramifications for if, how and to what extent women and men prepare for wildfire.
Christine Eriksen is a social geographer with the Australian Centre for Cultural Environmental Research and the Centre for Environmental Risk Management of Bushfires at the University of Wollongong.
Routledge International Studies of Women and Place
SERIES EDITORS: JANET HENSHALL MOMSEN AND JANICE MONK, University of California, Davis and University of Arizona, USA
1 Gender, Migration and Domestic Service
Edited by Janet Henshall Momsen
2 Gender Politics in the Asia-Pacific Region
Edited by Brenda S.A. Yeoh, Peggy Teo and Shirlena Huang
3 Geographies of Womens Health
Place, Diversity and Difference
Edited by Isabel Dyck, Nancy Davis Lewis and Sara McLafferty
4 Gender, Migration and the Dual Career Household
Irene Hardill
5 Female Sex Trafficking in Asia
The Resilience of Patriarchy in a Changing World
Vidyamali Samarasinghe
6 Gender and Landscape
Renegotiating the Moral Landscape
Edited by Lorraine Dowler, Josephine Carubia and Bonj Szczygiel
7 Maternities
Gender, Bodies and Spaces
Robyn Longhurst
8 Gender and Family among Transnational Professionals
Edited by Anne Coles and Anne-Meike Fechter
9 Gender and Agrarian Reforms
Susie Jacobs
10 Gender and Rurality
Lia Bryant and Barbara Pini
11 Feminist Advocacy and Gender Equity in the Anglophone Caribbean
Envisioning a Politics of Coalition
Michelle V. Rowley
12 Women, Religion, and Space in China
Islamic Mosques & Daoist Temples, Catholic Convents and Chinese Virgins
Maria Jaschok and Shui Jingjun
13 Gender and Wildfire
Landscapes of Uncertainty
Christine Eriksen
Also available in this series:
Full Circles
Geographies of Women over the Life Course
Edited by Cindi Katz and Janice Monk
Viva
Women and Popular Protest in Latin America
Edited by Sarah A Radcliffe and Sallie Westwood
Different Places, Different Voices
Gender and Development in Africa, Asia and Latin America
Edited by Janet Momsen and Vivian Kinnaird
Servicing the Middle Classes
Class, Gender and Waged Domestic Labour in Contemporary Britain
Nicky Gregson and Michelle Lowe
Womens Voices from the Rainforest
Janet Gabriel Townsend
Gender, Work and Space
Susan Hanson and Geraldine Pratt
Women and the Israeli Occupation
Edited by Tamar Mayer
Feminism / Postmodernism / Development
Edited by Marianne H. Marchand and Jane L. Parpart
Women of the European Union
The Politics of Work and Daily Life
Edited by Maria Dolors Garcia Ramon and Janice Monk
Who Will Mind the Baby?
Geographies of Childcare and Working Mothers
Edited by Kim England
Feminist Political Ecology
Global Issues and Local Experience
Edited by Dianne Rocheleau, Barbara Thomas-Slayter, and Esther Wangari
Women Divided
Gender, Religion and Politics in Northern Ireland
Rosemary Sales
Womens Lifeworlds
Womens Narratives on Shaping their Realities
Edited by Edith Sizoo
Gender, Planning and Human Rights
Edited by Tovi Fenster
Gender, Ethnicity and Place
Women and Identity in Guyana
Linda Peake and D. Alissa Trotz
First published 2014
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The right of Christine Eriksen to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Eriksen, Christine.
Gender and wildfire : landscapes of uncertainty / by Christine Eriksen.
pages cm. (Routledge international studies of women and place ; 13)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. WildfiresSocial aspectsAustralia, Southeastern. 2. WildfiresSocial aspectsPacific Coast (U.S.) 3. Sex roleAustralia, Southeastern. 4. Sex rolePacific Coast (U.S.) 5. Fire managementSocial aspectsAustralia, Southeastern. 6. Fire managementSocial aspectsPacific Coast (U.S.) 7. PreparednessSocial aspectsAustralia, Southeastern. 8. PreparednessSocial aspectsPacific Coast (U.S.) 9. Australia, SoutheasternSocial conditions. 10. Pacific Coast (U.S.)Social conditions. I. Title.
SD421.34.A8E75 2013
363.379dc23
2013025664
ISBN13: 978-0-415-50270-2 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-1-315-77950-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by IBT Global.
