Gender Conscious Labor Environmentalism

Authors

• Chaumtoli Huq

Abstract

Drawing primarily from the internationally recognized human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, ("right to a healthy environment") as well as related international environmental and economic human rights laws, this Article makes three critical moves towards theorizing a gender conscious approach to labor environmentalism. First, this Article demonstrates through four cases studies from Bangladesh, that global and national labor movements can effectively address the root causes of labor rights violations, specifically around health and safety by deploying and mobilizing around the recently passed international right to a healthy environment. Second, the right to a healthy environment offers a strategic legal tool that labor movements can mobilize and build labor-environment coalitions to push for greater rights and build solidarity across social movements. This concept is often referred to as labor environmentalism. The right to a healthy environment offers a strategic legal and social movement mobilization opportunity for two chief reasons. It came to light due to global grassroots organizing and because it helps promote other human rights. These features allow other rights, like global labor rights, to be integrated into it. Third, a gender conscious approach to labor environmentalism enables reconceptualization of women, workers, and the environment, which would allow for more emancipatory visions of economic and environmental justice to emerge-an approach that benefits all workers. The language of the right to a healthy environment and its recognition of the particular vulnerability of women workers enables a gender conscious approach. The Article illustrates this by focusing on four women majority workforces in Bangladesh: tea workers, rural agricultural workers, homestead aquaculture, and garment factories in urban areas. Ultimately, this Article suggests that an important strategy to addressing global exploitation of workers is building ecological and sustainable communities that sustain livelihoods for people that meet their needs and that protect the environment. In the context of the Global South, a solidaristic effort is necessary to curb worker exploitation and environmental degradation, which are intertwined. Women workers are most vulnerable under global capitalism as workers and bear the brunt of environmental destruction. Hence, the right to a healthy environment, even though it is non-binding, utilizing a gender conscious labor environmentalism approach can address some irretractable labor rights violations experienced by women workers in the Global South.

Recommended Citation

Huq, Chaumtoli (2024) "Gender Conscious Labor Environmentalism," Hofstra Labor & Employment Law Journal: Vol. 42: Iss. 1, Article 3.
Available at: https://scholarlycommons.law.hofstra.edu/hlelj/vol42/iss1/3