Climate change vs Gender

As the climate crisis increases drastically, so do living conditions and resources for lower per income GDP capita countries. However, poverty has never correlated through equal effect, and the most affected within these countries are low class women, especially those within a ethic minority group. The range could be from exploitation, to mental health, and even child marriage, all of which create a cycle of domestic and sexual abuse. If climate change plans within different countries don't include or acknowledge women in these roles, many of these problems may be overlooked.

Mayesha Alam, a graduate of Yale University with focus on climate, states “women have been historically excluded from domestic, regional, and international negotiations around climate change, biodiversity, and resources.” Although she states it has improved in bringing women such as Greta Thunberg and Vanessa Nakate being observed as leaders in the climate crises, struggling voices still fight within a majority of Southern American or African countries. As globalization changes these continents since the 1950s, a growing mass of men in lower income countries tend to abandon their families to live in cities in order for higher economic prosperities or work in cities or even different countries to support the family financially (Washington Post, 2018). Through this, "women and girls overwhelmingly undertake the labor (historically) of gathering food, water, and household  energy resources,” (Alam, 2018). As climate change increases, so does higher labor for women in rural communities, resulting in young girls also leaving school in order to participate in helping their mothers and sisters in farm life, or even walk longer distances to find food and water such as the case in India Bangladesh, where climate change affected the amount of salt within a freshwater river.

Although women are forced to leave school, this could be argued as the best case scenario for women in low income communities, as the climate crisis also affects health, violence and even family relations interchangeably. With the prospect of child marriages, an example being Malawi, an estimated 1.5 million increase of child marriages could come within the upcoming decades because of climate change through economic collapse. There are several reasons for this, but the main three are the child is an economic burden to feed or educate, the family needing to create economic ties to survive, or the amount of labor doesn't suit the cost of raising the child physically with their needs growing up. Based on GirlsNotBrides

organization, over 50% of children married before becoming 15 are likely to experience both physical and sexual viloence with their partners. The girl's new role as wife also creates a stronger barrier for access to education because of family pressure, resulting in likely chances of doing labor intensive work.

The health benefits are also being affected through climate change,  especially mentally with correlation of domestic violence. For mental health, living within a high drought or high climate change affected environment such as an island nation or desert results in an increase of “

trauma and shock, post-traumatic stress disorder, feelings of abandonment, and anxiety and depression”. In the correlation of economic stress and domestic violence, male partners are more likely to enact physical violence to women who have more barriers with employment. Although there are contradictive findings on women who are employed or unemployed their relationship to domestic violence, there is a strong correlation that in more stress induced environments, male partners tend to create a dominant and controlling role compared to female partners, even if not in the environment or in long distance relationships. In the case of a climate devastated environment such as the aftermath of a storm or higher than average drought season, this event could lead to more labor being introduced to female partners, creating stronger barriers to leave from a household that their children are dependent apon.  The amount of stress within a household  is also known for influencing decisions such as child marriages in families as well, such as the stress of raising the child and not having time to look over family land. Either way, mental health is a strong component even without anxiety of the future. Despite this being a problem many of these countries do not have supported infrastructure for mental health, and even less access for women. “ A 2021 WHO survey of 95 countries found that only 9 have thus far included mental health and psychosocial support in their national health and climate change plans.” (WHO, 2022).  With the low amount of emphasis on climate change and mental health, it would only not solve the intended domestic problem within rural communities.

Women represent around 43% of the global agricultural workforce, however because of domestic barriers, they do not have much of a say in how resources are given or what is needed for them to succeed in having proper education and health. Stressors from climate change also affect outside the rural household, as, through lack of land use, exploitation such as human trafficking or labor exploration increase, and is especially targeted towards women and minority groups. Overall, women need more representation when dealing with climate change since they are who are most affected.

Bump P. “The series of choices faced by immigrants fleeing Central America” washingtonpost.com, Washington Post, June 2018, Oct 2022

Clayton S. “ Urgent need to address mental health effects of climate change, says report” apa.org, American Psychological Association, Nov 2021, Oct 2022

“Explainer: How gender inequality and climate change are interconnected” unwomen.org, UN Women, Feb 2022, Oct 2022

Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung “Gender Responsive Climate Finance” unfccc.int, UNFCCC Secretariat,Aug 2019, Oct 2022

Kidman, “Child marriage and intimate partner violence: a comparative study of 34 countries”, girlsnotbrides.org, International Journal of Epidemiology, Volume 46, Issue 2, 1 April 2017, Pages 662–675

Larkin V. “Economic Stress and Domestic Violence” vawnet.org,  VAWnet: The National Online Resource Center on Violence Against Women,  Sept 2009, Oct 2022

Mawby B. “Women and Climate Change” georgetown.edu, The Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace & Security, 2015, 2022

McCarthy J. “ Understanding Why Climate Change Impacts Women More Than Men” globalcitizen.org, Global Poverty Project, Inc, March 2020, Oct 2022

Sheppard S. “ Why mental health is a priority for action on climate change” who.int, 2022 WHO, June 2022, Oct 2022

Service Hours,

During this term, students of GCE were forced to stay in home and work on their service hours through home task.  I did three activities with the time I had at home. The first was garden and lawn work, such as taking out weeds and cutting grass. The second activity was sanding and painting the deck of my house, which took around 4 hours. The third activity was picking up trash from the streets. I used my sword to pick up trash and sort it out throughout the neighborhood, and walked my dog in the process.

I was cautious, mostly about getting the disease since I was picking random trash. I learned about being careful, and making sure I get all the pieces of trash. I also learned about optimistic as the hours would be in either heat or wet when I worked to pick up trash.

JN "Service Work" own work, 2020

Coral Health

This would be the last assignment of my high school life and so it is emotional for me to finish it. During my term in GCE, our grade experimented with a new class called "Frontiers". It includes the science behind oceans, history of exploration, and understanding how climate change affects our environment. We had no field experiences during this course do to COVID-19. We did however meet with Zachary and Phil of Urban Rivers to talk about the health of Chicago's natural ecosystems.

For this final assignment, we would create a literature review based around one of the eight challenges that marine scientist are dealing with. I choose number four where scientist have troubles finding the overall status of the ocean's health. I decided to study into coral as I saw that part of the ocean as an important factor in the survival of ocean life. The struggles I had with this project was finding the information that was easier to understand. The pride I have of this project would be it being the last one.

For an outro, there is not much I could say. Only that I would like to thank the teachers and staff for the past four years. I struggled hard on many things, and I learned to integrate my art with my schoolwork. I just hope college works as well as high school did.

Health and Service

What to do when your stuck at home. That's something I've been worked on for sometime and found several ways to keep myself occupied. But what I do consistently is walk the dog and cook with my grandmother . I specifically cook with her Colombian theme meals such dishes as rice, beans, omelets, arrepas, tortas, and soup. I also learned how to keep the kitchen clean, how to cut and cook certain meats, and how to use food when there is a shortage. It takes me an hour to cook and clean.

As for walking my dog, I normally walk him around the town in a square, which takes an hour and thirty depending on how he is feeling. Sometimes he stops, not because of tiredness but of stubbornness. He is a very lazy dog and walking him was mostly my time to get out of the house.

What I got from these hours was a sense of direction. It helped me stay focused during a time where it was easy for myself to get lost in your own house by yourself. It taught me to be a global citizen by learning new foods from my culture and exploring places in my town I hadn't seen before. I have a total of 61.5 health and wellness hours.

JN, "Walking Dog" own Work, 2020

JN "Cooking Picture" own work, 2020

Last Humanities AP

When do you know compare yourself in the future, how good you are at planning, or how you dreamed big compared to the past ? These are questions I ask for this assignment in my class, Endurance. In Endurance, my class and I studied history of people who were challenged such as those from the Holocaust, my classmates and their experiences, and people who enduring today, such as the people in the worst places for Corona. 

For this assignment, the class individually worked on a planning out their future. Normally for these assignments, I plan on being an animator. What was tiresome were the setbacks that kept happening for the beginning days and what I'm proud of are the blueprints of life I made.

A Tower of Using Talent

When do you know how well you measure well, how good you are at a skill, or how you connect your school life to projects in the future? These are questions I ask for this assignment in my class, Endurance. In Endurance, my class and I studied history of people who endured such as those from the Holocaust, talked to my classmates about experiences in our lives, and talked about people who enduring today, such as the Swedish girl who traveled around the world. 

For this assignment, the class individually worked on a twelve hour project on whatever they chose. Normally for these creative assignments, I would work on animation. However, I felt a bit tired and instead worked architecture as I planned that to be my minor. What was tiresome were the setbacks that kept happening for the beginning days and what I'm proud of are the blueprints I made.

I’m getting close to the last assignment I will have before I graduate, so I would like to reflect about this class in a virtual space. After several weeks, I gained the comfortability with the tech and I now walk around my hometown while taking classes sometimes. However, I still would like to have real life classes since that keeps me better organized and people could learn better when they are in a physical place with teachers. I wondered in the past few months what’s the purpose of real life learning if we could now access the same teachers online and where we don’t use paper anymore. I wonder if the events now are pushing people towards understanding that we can’t be kept under a rock no matter how much we try.

I want to go to college in real life rather than online because I alway saw people as having a mix between real life and online as our progression for human learning. I want to craft materials and learn how to build real life buildings rather than see it digitally. I want to do animation traditionally with a teacher telling what I should exactly do, and always converse with people around me for creative ideas.

  Enduraance from Jeimar Neiza on Vimeo.

Home Made Lasanga

What to do when your stuck at home. That's something I've been working on for sometime and found several ways to keep myself occupied. This includes doing artwork, doing homework, and cleaning the house. But what I'm doing as a new activity is cooking with my grandmother as she teaches me how to make traditional Colombian meals. For Wellness credits, my grandmother helped me make such dishes as rice, beans, omelets, arrepas, tortas, and soup. I also learned how to keep the kitchen clean, how to cut and cook certain meats, and how to use food when there is a shortage.

Today, we are going to talk about how to make simple Lasagna that could be completed easily. Here are the listed ingredients.

- Half a medium bag of Spinach
- Lasagna sheet pasta
- Rosemary and Two cloves of Garlic
-Grounded beef
-Canned Tomato Sauce
- Onion
- Flour
- Mozzarella and Chile Cheese
-Canola Oil
-Salt

1. You first crush the rosemary with the two clothes of garlic and salt. Afterwards, you get a cup of water and the ground beef and put them in a pot to cook. You mix the garlic mix with the ground beef and put a top over it to let it cook. Mix it occasionally.

2. You then get the spinach and cut it up into small pieces using scissors. Make sure you take out leaves that look wrinkled or to moist. You then wash and dry a glass holding.

3. Get 3 cups of water and the store bought lasagna sheets. Heat the water until it's boiled and put in as many sheets as long as there is pasta on the bottom, middle, and top. During this time, after 20-25 minutes, the meat will be done.

3. Get the tomato sauce and cook it with half a cup of flour and some cilantro. This will make the paste thicker. You then cut the onion into small pieces and mix with the paste until the onion pieces looks well cooked.

4. Oil the holding until it is all slippery. Put the first layer of pasta on the bottom and add the cut up spinach. You then put the meet, then the sauce, and top it off with the two cheese. Repeat until you run out of both meat and spinach. If one runs out before the other, save that for later.

5. Make sure to pre-heat the over to 350 degrees farenhiet. You then put the lasagna in for 35 minutes until it's done.