Postgraduate - UnitSWM5260 - Gender, climate change and social sustainability

In recent decades significant global changes have impacted on the way people and communities live their lives. This unit provides an international and national focus on emerging threats such as climate change, water and food security and on factors such as globalisation and social movements, and their gendered impacts on people and communities. Research from across the world reveals that impacts vary significantly between women and men and that these impacts will affect the abilities of families and communities to sustain themselves into the future. Our ability to live sustainably will be one of the challenges of the twenty-first century. Because of the significant social impacts of these changes, this unit provides a social work perspective to this new field of practice. Social workers will be critical workers providing the link between people, communities and the policy environment.

This unit examines these major factors and the potential social work response. It draws on frameworks for practice including a human rights and anti-oppressive perspective and examines policy responses and how these are potentially shaped by key stakeholders and leaders to the exclusion of others. Critical concepts are gender, social inclusion, resilience and sustainability. The unit draws out ways for social workers to become critical change agents.