Towards the construction of social sustainability: the environment, gender relations, and domestic units

Abstract

Since 1971, after experts on the environment and development met in Founex, Switzerland, much of the discussion around issues of development—in national as well as international contexts—has been permeated by the search for models of development that can reconcile the need for sustainability of the Earth’s natural systems with social needs. In this regard, research, policy design, and implementation of actions that seek to construct sustainable development processes have been many and varied. To date, important advances have been made in terms of our understanding of the ecological and economic dimensions of sustainability. However, the social aspects involved in the construction of these processes has been less well addressed, and much remains to be done. In this article, I will address the social dimensions of sustainability, emphasizing gender relations in the processes of accessing, using, and managing natural, economic, and social resources. I present a methodological proposal to analyze the social and gender relations involved in the binomial of society-nature. Taking domestic units as units of analysis, the study of intra-domestic relationships allows us to approach the study of the social dimension of sustainability and to explore—from a social and gender perspective—the causes, consequences, and management of environmental changes.