80% of people displaced by climate disasters are women. Gender minorities face higher risks of violence and discrimination during climate emergencies. These numbers reflect real lives and real traumas – but they’re not the whole story. By MITZI JONELLE TAN
As bell hooks writes in her book All About Love, the systems we have today teach and allow domination and control over others. “When we are taught that safety lies in domination, we learn to equate love with subjugation.” That’s the lie my father was taught. That’s the lie too many still believe.
Violence is not love
My mom almost lost her life because of my father. At age seven, I remember peeking at her through a hospital room window, cables coming out of her nose, black sludge pumping from her stomach. She had tried to kill herself.
Growing up, I often heard from the other room how he abused her – emotionally, verbally, and what she didn’t let me see, physically. She endured this for years, not because she wanted to, but because she had no choice. When they married, she became financially dependent. Everything she had worked on before they were married, all her savings and dreams, was now under his control. In the Philippines, where divorce is illegal, marriage can become a trap. She was taught that to be a good mother was to keep the family together, to endure abuse, for my sake.
She only left when it became undeniable. One night, a confrontation left her on the road, blood dripping from her head. That’s when she realized she had to choose between staying and life. She left, even though she knew it would be hard. She left so she could be my mom. Even if we struggled, we were free.
This is the strength of mothers, not the romanticized kind, but the kind that will risk everything just to live.
My father said that his control was “protection.” He said his violence was “love.”
Why I Fight
So when people ask me why I care about climate justice, this is part of my answer. I want the world to be a better place so I can feel safe, so we can all feel safe. Over time, I came to understand that what happened in my home was not an isolated event. The same systems that taught my father he was entitled to control my mother are the ones that allow corporations to control land, water, people, and life. It’s the same systems that normalize extraction from bodies, forests, and oceans, and call it “growth” and “development.”
I fight for climate justice because I refuse to believe that control, domination, and extraction are the only ways to live and develop. For us to live in a safe environment and truly be cared for and loved, we need to address the roots of these crises.
The Creation of Patriarchy
Gerda Lerner, in The Creation of Patriarchy, reminds us that before the development of agriculture and settled societies, during the hunter-gatherer era, societies were generally more egalitarian, and in many cases, matrilineal, and there was no accumulation of private property. The rise of private property and class systems marked a turning point, ushering in patriarchy and institutionalized domination. This shift put us on a path that appoints the ruling class to decide whose boundaries are to be respected more than others. Now, we live in an imperialist, capitalist system that has maintained and used patriarchy to get ever stronger.
To sustain patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism, the rich white elite strategically propagated the notion of separation among different groups, the idea that there is an „Other“ whose needs were not as important, whose boundaries did not need to be respected, who can be exploited – an object to conquer.
The way colonialism and imperialism take people and land to pillage and exploit as if they have ownership over them, capitalism continues to do with workers and nature to accumulate profit by any means, and patriarchy with women and gender minorities.
Mother Earth
Scientists say we’ve already crossed six of nine planetary boundaries: interconnected ecological thresholds that, when exceeded, risk triggering irreversible environmental changes and undermining the planet’s ability to sustain human life. Climate change, biodiversity loss, land conversion for the sake of “development”, chemical pollution, draining and disrupting water sources, and overloading land and water with farm chemicals – these are the six we have crossed.
All this for the benefit of the richest, most of whom are white men, at the expense of women, gender non-conforming, gender fluid, trans, Black, brown, Indigenous, people of color, disabled, the working class, the economically marginalized, and nature.
When we think of the Earth personified, it is often portrayed as a mother – Mother Earth. I wonder: if we lived in a society where mothers of all kinds were respected, if our planet’s boundaries would be respected too. The pillage of the Earth and the abuse of women go hand in hand. Both are treated as objects to be exploited rather than beings to be respected.
The same forces that uphold gender injustice are fueling ecological collapse. Whether it’s the U.S.’s Trump gutting environmental protections and continuing fossil fuel expansion while pushing misogynist policies, or more subtly, the Philippines’ Marcos, supposedly calling for climate adaptation, while women environmental defenders continue to be abducted or tagged as terrorists for going against environmentally destructive projects.
Therefore, climate justice must be rooted in gender justice, and gender justice must embrace climate justice.
What connects us
We must not only resist destruction and collapse but also cultivate life-affirming alternatives, such as decentralized renewable energy cooperatives, community-led farming and agroecology, and care-based, interdependent neighborhoods. These are not distant ideals – pockets of the future we’re fighting for already exist. To heal the planet, we must also heal our relationships with each other, with the Earth, and with ourselves. It’s not the injustice that connects us. It’s our commitment to shared liberation.
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Mitzi Jonelle Tan is a writer, climate justice activist, and organizer from Metro Manila, Philippines. She is Global Coordinator with the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, the Project Lead of the Climate Justice Squad Fellowship, and a member of Gabriela Germany – the German chapter of Gabriela, an anti-imperialist gender justice alliance in the Philippines.
