This is the second of a three part interview. The first part, which is on UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figuere’s hopes for the future of the UN Climate Talks in 2011, can be found here, and the final part will follow soon.
This question was a personal one for me, and I wanted to share some reflections:
Last week I had the privilege to interview Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, one of the questions I asked her was about the role of women in the UN climate talks.
As a young woman coming to these talks, though I am pretty confident and outgoing, I often feel like I struggle to find a space in a very male dominated atmosphere. On more than one occasion, I have withdrawn because I felt I wasn’t taken seriously because of my gender, my age, or both.
It’s not just that there are more males here, but the way we work is more ‘male oriented’, i.e. it is a highly competitive, powerful, intense environment where emotions very rarely come into play - even as we discuss the fate of millions of people. And it is not just in the halls. As I sit in the negotiations I also see this atmosphere and way of working prevail. At 1am, when talks are stalled over a power game that leads our not-known-to-be-feminist French team-mate to say “we’re never going to get anywhere if these men insist on fighting to the death”, I know gender is not just an issue for the women here, but also an issue that encompasses the whole way we are working and has implications for the outcomes of these climate negotiations.
Only 17% of lead negotiators at the UNFCCC are women, and though actually they are some of the most respected and well known of the lead negotiators, 17% really isn’t a lot. I think if we changed things with respect to gender, we could maybe change things in the talks.
So when I spoke to Christiana I wanted to know whether she had ever been treated differently because of the way she acts, and whether she thought things could be different if we upped the numbers of women negotiating.
At first I was unsure, Christiana as a role model for me and many of the young women here, someone I really look up to and aspire to be like, seemed to be delegitimising the way I felt. If she had never felt this way, was I imagining it? I went away and thought for a long time about what she said and realised I was not: every person is different, and even if one person feels this way, then this is a legitimate concern. Christiana is a strong and amazing woman. Perhaps, in our male dominated world, even someone who shows as much emotion as Christiana, still isn’t able to speak out on personal struggles for needing not to show weakness and vulnerability in a position of power.
It took me a long time to acknowledge and speak out about the way I feel at the UNFCCC. I’ve been to 10 sessions now and only recently began to put these thoughts into words. I don’t know how I would feel about doing this if I was so deep inside it and trying to live, work and gain respect in this world constantly.
Or maybe Christiana never has come up against these things, or thought about them; I know for a fact that she surrounds herself with a very balanced team. Of all the places to work within the UNFCCC it is the secretariat with the most women and whose way of working is least ‘male’, that’s in comparison to the negotiating teams and even the NGOs . It wasn’t always that way, but when Christiana took up the job, things started to change. Whether this was a conscious or subconscious decision, by being the way she is she has changed the atmosphere within her team. And even that small change has definitely started to trickle down into the halls.
Either way I believe and respect Christiana when she says she doesn’t know whether she has ever come up against problems, because she is “just being me, I don’t know it any other way”. As a role model, her being confident enough to say this, in whatever situation she finds herself in, is definitely something for me and many others to aspire to.
So what of the talks? I think Christiana and I were in agreement that something innate in women often makes them more prone toward compromise. And if compromise is what we’re looking for in the UNFCCC, then surely increasing the numbers would make it a more likely outcome? But Christiana argued for quality over quantity. I don’t know how I feel about this, if women are forever in the minority, then will we ever get past this male dominance, even if they are strong and powerful?
What I do know is that as I have followed these talks over the years, I have come to be aware that issues of gender, of race, of age, issues of discrimination and oppression run through the way all of us work. It is only by tackling them that we can begin to tackle the power imbalances that keep the UNFCCC among many other fora from working as it should. If we can address the power issues that run through the way we work and infect every decision that is taken, maybe we can get these talks back on track.
The opportunity to speak to Christiana one-to-one about these issues reminded me that even though I am sometimes intimidated in these halls, just being here means I am already in a highly privileged position. Speaking to her also reminded me of how much has already changed in the year since she became Executive Secretary, I continue to be inspired by the way she tackles her job each and every day. But the progress we have made since she took over, as much as I value it, also reminds me of how far we have to go.
As time goes on, I become more and more passionate about the ability to change things through addressing these issues of how we relate and work with each other. I would love to know how others feel after both hearing what Christiana had to say and reading my thoughts.
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Bridget Burns
