Why gender matters for addressing chemical pollution

At a time when chemical management and governance are high on scientific and political agendas, we call on the scientific community to integrate gender into research on chemical pollution.
Chemicals have long been recognised to be inadequately managed, causing adverse effects on human and environmental health.1 The number and variety of chemicals in use are proliferating; the global chemicals market is projected to double in size by 2030.2 The increasing production and release of new chemicals is far outpacing the speed of safety assessments and chemical regulatory processes. In response, a new intergovernmental science–policy panel on chemicals, waste, and pollution prevention is being negotiated under the UN Environment Programme.3 We argue that this panel’s work should address the uneven and differentiated harms from chemicals, particularly along the lines of gender. Exposure and risk assessment data continue to use the mean European male, with mean body weight and height, for extrapolation of animal data. These data then inform risk criteria, policies, and legislation. Consequently, solutions are often ineffective, especially for individuals undertaking gendered and racialised chemically intensive work, such as domestic cleaning and agricultural labour. Put simply, our systems of knowledge for understanding, managing, and governing chemicals have systemic gaps that reinforce structural inequalities.4
Integrating gender presents opportunities to develop more robust research and evidence-based policies on chemical pollution than currently available. First, by collecting sex-disaggregated and gender-disaggregated baseline data, different routes of exposure and health effects could be more accurately identified to inform gender-specific policy recommendations and interventions. Second, integrating gender into research can foreground questions of power, inviting a reconsideration of which voices and forms of knowledge have authority in research and in policy making. The Basel, Rotterdam, and Stockholm conventions offer lessons on how gender might be effectively integrated at the science–policy interface. Third, integrating gender facilitates stronger epistemic links across public, environmental, occupational, global, and planetary health by transgressing fragmented problem domains. In other words, a gendered approach enables us to see how pollution is not just an environmental problem and requires collaboration across enduring disciplinary silos to be effectively addressed.
Integrating a gender perspective has recently been made a high priority in the new UN Global Framework on Chemicals, and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has published inputs on the issue.5 We write in response to these developments and encourage our scientific communities to meet this challenge.