INTRODUCTION

To add an additional chapter on women in a book of this type is controversial, particularly for those with concerns about gender discrimination. The danger in having a chapter on gender issues is that women's issues might be seen as separate from most issues in global ethics, when clearly this is not the case. All the issues we have addressed in the course of this book affect women at least as much as they do men. Yet the lower status of women relative to men means that, however much men suffer from the injustices of, for example, poverty or climate change, women suffer more. In Chapter 10, for instance, we considered the ways in which environmental injustice compounds other forms of injustice to make those “at the bottom of the heap” likely to be more disadvantaged because these injustices exacerbate each other. Those at the bottom of all heaps will be women. Clearly, rich Western women are rarely in this particular category, but the poorest of the poor are always women and children. Accordingly, despite the dangers of what we can call “exceptionalism” about women, it is important to have a chapter on women to highlight their plight and the particular difficulties women face in addition to sharing with men all the global injustices we have already considered. Moreover, any worries about exceptionalism should be lessened by the discussion of gender issues throughout the volume.