Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T07:25:20.605Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Extractivism, Gender, and Disease: An Intersectional Approach to Inequalities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2018

Cristina Cielo  and
Lisset Coba
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Social inequalities can only be understood through the interaction of their multiple dimensions. In this essay, we show that the economic and environmental impacts of natural resource extraction exacerbate gendered disparities through the intensification and devaluation of care work. A chikungunya epidemic in the refinery city of Esmeraldas, Ecuador, serves to highlight the embodied and structural violence of unhealthy conditions. Despite its promises of development, the extraction-based economy in Esmeraldas has not increased its vulnerable populations’ opportunities. It has, instead, deepened class and gendered hierarchies. In this context, the most severe effects of chikungunya are experienced by women, who bear the burden of social reproduction and sustaining lives under constant threat.

Keywords

extractive economiescare workgenderhealth inequalitiesstructural violence
Type
Essays
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , Summer 2018 , pp. 169 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

1 Whitehead, Margaret, Dahlgren, Göran, and Evans, Timothy, “Equity and Health Sector Reforms: Can Low-Income Countries Escape the Medical Poverty Trap?” Lancet 358, no. 9284 (2001), pp. 833–36Google Scholar.

2 In Venezuela, for example, 90.9 percent of the country's total exports were primary materials in 2000; by 2010, this number had reached 96 percent. In 2005, Bolivia's exports included 89.4 percent raw materials; in 2010, that number had reached 92.6 percent. See Lander, Edgardo, Arze, Carlos, et al. , Promesas en su Laberinto: Cambios y continuidades en los gobiernos progresistas de América Latina (La Paz: Centro de Estudios para el Desarrollo Laboral y Agrario, 2013)Google Scholar.

3 Svampa, Maristella, “Commodities Consensus: Neoextractivism and Enclosure of the Commons in Latin America,” South Atlantic Quarterly 114, no. 1 (2015), pp. 65–82Google Scholar.

4 Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censo (INEC), Difusión de Resultados Definitivos del VI Censo de Población y V de Vivienda 2001 – Julio 2002 (Quito: INEC, 2002).

5 Caria, Sara and Domínguez, Rafael, “Ecuador's Buen Vivir: A New Ideology for Development,” Latin American Perspectives 43, no. 1 (2016), pp. 18–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 The average years of schooling of Esmeraldeños is only 7.9; the province ranks 21st out of 24 provinces in average years of schooling; and it ranks 18th in percentage of population completing primary education (37 percent). See Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censo (INEC), 2010 Census (Quito: INEC, 2011).

7 According to the 2010 Census, of the economically active population in Esmeraldas, 26 percent are self-employed in the informal sector, 20 percent work in private employment, 18 percent are day laborers, 14 percent are civil servants, and 4 percent are domestic workers.

8 World Petroleum Council and Boston Consulting Group, Untapped Reserves: Promoting Gender Balance in Oil and Gas (Boston: Boston Consulting Group, 2017)Google Scholar.

9 Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censo (INEC), 2010 Census. Socio-demographic data on Esmeraldas that appears in this article is from this 2010 census.

10 Costa, Mariarosa Dalla and James, Selma, The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community (Bristol, England: Falling Wall Press, 1972)Google Scholar.

11 Turner, Terisa and Brownhill, Leigh, “Ecofeminism as Gendered, Ethnicized Class Struggle,” Capitalism Nature Socialism 17, no. 4 (2006), pp. 87–95Google Scholar.

12 See Federici, Silvia, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Autonomedia, 2004)Google Scholar.

13 Luginaah, Isaac, Taylor, S. Martin, Elliott, Susan J., and Eyles, John D., “A Longitudinal Study of the Health Impacts of a Petroleum Refinery,” Social Science & Medicine 50, no. 7–8 (2000), pp. 1155–166CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

14 Charvet, Erika Silva, “Género y ambiente entre afrodescendientes de Esmeraldas, Ecuador,” in Poats, Susan V., Sánchez, María Cuvi, and Tzonkowa, Adriana Burbano, eds., Tejiendo redes entre género y ambiente en los Andes (Quito: Corporación Grupo Randi Randi, Centro de la Mujer Peruana Flora Tristán y Abya Yala, 2007), pp. 141–74Google Scholar.

15 Santos-Vega, Mauricio, Martinez, Pamela, and Pascual, Mercedes, “Climate Forcing and Infectious Disease Transmission in Urban Landscapes: Integrating Demographic and Socioeconomic Heterogeneity,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1382 (2016), pp. 44–55Google Scholar.

16 Elsinga, Jelte et al. , “Community Participation in Mosquito Breeding Site Control: An Interdisciplinary Mixed Methods Study in Curaçao,” Parasites & Vectors 10 (2017), pp. 434Google Scholar.

17 Lee, Su Hyun et al. , “The Effects of Climate Change and Globalization on Mosquito Vectors,” PLoS ONE 8, no. 7 (2013)Google Scholar.

18 Sharma, Karmesh D. et al. , “Exploratory Space-Time Analysis of Dengue Incidence in Trinidad: A Retrospective Study Using Travel Hubs as Dispersal Points, 1998–2004,” Parasites & Vectors 7 (2014), pp. 341CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Guagliardo, Sarah Anne et al. , “River Boats Contribute to the Regional Spread of the Dengue Vector Aedes Aegypti in the Peruvian Amazon,” PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases 9, no. 4 (2017)Google Scholar.

20 Patterson, Jessica, Sammon, Maura and Garg, Manish, “Dengue, Zika and Chikungunya: Emerging Arboviruses in the New World”, Western Journal of Emergency Medicine 17 no.6 (2016), p.671Google Scholar.

21 Salje, Henrik et al. , “Reconstruction of 60 Years of Chikungunya Epidemiology in the Philippines Demonstrates Episodic and Focal Transmission,” Journal of Infectious Diseases 213, no. 4 (2016), pp. 604–10Google Scholar.

22 Razmy, Athambawa Mohamed, “Clinical Features of Chikungunya Infection in Sri Lanka,” Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Disease 4, no. 2 (2014), pp. 131–34Google Scholar.

23 Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, “Mosquito-Borne Illness Spreads In and Around Homes, Disproportionately Hits Women,” November 7, 2016, www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2016/mosquito-borne-illness-spreads-in-and-around-homes-disproportionately-hits-women.html.

24 World Health Organization Western Pacific Region, Taking Sex and Gender into Account in Emerging Infectious Disease Programmes: An Analytic Framework (Geneva: World Health Organization, 2011)Google Scholar.

25 Frank, Amy et al. , “‘We Need People to Collaborate Together against This Disease’: A Qualitative Exploration of Perceptions of Dengue Fever Control in Caregivers’ of Children Under 5 Years, in the Peruvian Amazon,” PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases 11, no. 9 (2017)Google Scholar.

26 Trewin, Brendan et al. , “The Elimination of the Dengue Vector, Aedes Aegypti, from Brisbane, Australia: The Role of Surveillance, Larval Habitat Removal and Policy,” PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases 11, no. 8 (2017)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.