Women of the Arctic – and the importance of gender in the Arctic

Women of the Arctic (WoA) is a non-profit association that works to raise awareness of and support for women’s and gender-related issues across the Arctic. WoA conducts original research, facilitates network-building and promotes storytelling. Whenever possible, WoA creates spaces for greater equity in ongoing conversations on the Arctic – especially in academia, business and policy.

We spoke to WoA leaders , about why gender is an Arctic issue and what inspired them to start WoA.

Why is it important to consider gender in an Arctic context?

Gender – in the Arctic and elsewhere – is an integral part of understanding the world. In the rapidly changing Arctic this becomes especially important: we need to include the experiences of  genders to understand the full picture of environmental and societal transformation happening across the circumpolar North.

However, there are still experiences missing from the broader picture. For instance,

• Balanced knowledge about gendered issues.
• Gender-sensitive approaches across all sectors of policy and decision-making.
• The inclusion of all genders in critical discussions.

It’s even more important to address gender-related issues because the prevailing historical narrative of the Arctic is built on masculine stories of polar explorers, often without acknowledging the contributions of others, including women. To some extent, this narrative continues today, even if implicitly – although things are changing!

In short: gender is everywhere, and it affects all domains of public, social and personal life. Currently, gender is hardly visible in Arctic conversations, policies, trends and developments that are shaping the future of the region.

What are some of the challenges around gender in an Arctic context?

One major challenge is how little gender is considered in many sectors and developments in the Arctic – both in research and policy.

In recent years, our work with WoA has focused on issues at the gender-environment nexus, which touches on so many other aspects of northern life – from mental health, to housing, to food security.

For instance, our work in the EU-funded Arctic PASSION project aims to co-create and implement an Arctic observing system that addresses the urgent needs of those who live in the Arctic – and is relevant to global society at the same time. Through this research, we’re working to better understand the gender-dimension of scientific and community-based environmental observations. This includes questions related to who decides what is observed, monitored, and measured. This significantly impacts the data that is collected, who has access to it, and how interventions are organized.

More recently, WoA started its work in the EU-funded ICEBERG project which seeks to comprehensively assess the sources, types, distributions, and impact of human and climate-induced pollution on ecosystems and communities in the European Arctic. It will also look at how to enhance community-led resilience and adaptation in response.

WoA will ensure that a gender-dimension is integrated throughout the project. Building on previous studies highlighting the gender-differentiated, health-related impacts of Persistent Organic Pollutants on northern Indigenous women, our hope is to work with our colleagues to better understand and respond to the gendered impacts of plastic pollution – an area which is garnering attention as negotiations for a Global Plastics Treaty continue.

Beyond this work, there are other critical, gendered issues that must be highlighted. To name a few:

• The link between resource-intensive industries and gender-based violence.
• The crisis of Missing and Murdered and Indigenous women.
• Suicide rates among northern men (including the link to environmental change).
• High rates of female outmigration.
• Barriers to the inclusion of women in Arctic research and how those can be overcome.

Finally, it is worth underlining that there is the lack of gender- and sex-disaggregated data for the Arctic. Often, we simply don’t know what we don’t know.

What was your inspiration for creating WoA?

Bringing greater awareness to women’s and gender-related issues in the Arctic started with a casual conversation between two of the co-founders, Gosia Smieszek and Tahnee Prior, at a workshop in 2017. We had noticed that while Arctic conferences and events were sprouting up like mushrooms, few of them gave women the space to raise political, economic, environmental, cultural, and social issues that were important to them.

Also, many incredible female experts, whether they were community leaders or scientists, were absent from plenary panels of key Arctic events. We felt that an important puzzle piece was missing from the conversation.

In 2018, with financial support from NordForsk, we organized “Women of the Arctic: Bridging Policy, Research, and Lived Experience” together with the University of the Arctic and the University of Helsinki at the UArctic Congress in Helsinki, Finland. The event served as a non-academic space for Indigenous and non-Indigenous women and girls, who work on or live in the Arctic, to explore the roles and contributions of women to northern policymaking, research, exploration, art, activism, and daily life.

We were surprised by the high turn-out and the recurring question: so, what’s next? The exhilarating feeling and name of our event stuck with us. So, we decided to register WoA as a non-profit together with our colleague Leena Rantamaula, an exhibition designer at the Arctic Centre in Rovaniemi, Finland. Our new board member, Sohvi Kangasluoma (who joined after Leena stepped down in 2023) is perhaps the proof in the pudding of the type of serendipitous connections we hope to cultivate: we all first met when Sohvi stumbled upon our event in Helsinki.

Since then, our goal is to maintain the conversation on women’s and gender-related issues in the Arctic, whether it be at larger gatherings, in research projects, or otherwise.

How can women scientists get involved with WoA?

Anyone who is interested in getting involved with WoA should check out www.genderisnotplanb.com or email us directly at info@genderisnotplanb.com.