In recent years the relationship between gender and the environment has become more explicit and apparent. Women's work is often linked to the environment through subsistence agriculture, domestic chores and hired work such as sowing and weeding, and much of this work is made harder through environmental degradation. The relationship between gender and the environment is less obvious in the West where most people are more distant from the source of their food supply, the energy and the water they use. However, because women conceive, carry, give birth to and suckle their children, they are brought closer to an awareness of a number of environmental hazards. Gender and Environment introduces all the key areas in gender/environment relations in a lively and accessible manner, using case studies from North and South and covering relationships at the family, community and international levels. It provides an analysis of how gender relations affect the natural environment and of how environmental issues have a differential impact on women and men.